


Other Plans

by bomberqueen17



Series: Other Plans [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: A/U, AU With Stargate, Adorable non-obnoxious children, Awkward First Times, Conspiracy Theories, Domestic, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Family Drama, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, John Sheppard Is A Dad, John Whump, Kid Fic, M/M, Porn Watching, cop a/u
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-09 09:13:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 108,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1144203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A/U<br/>Life's what happens when you make other plans.<br/>Rodney McKay gets back from his unjust Siberia exile and takes a consulting gig that lets him work from home. He picks a random city, gets a cat, and starts cultivating his eccentricity.<br/>His upstairs neighbor is an insanely hot guy whose cop uniform either means the obvious, or that his night job is a stripper. Rodney doesn't care which, he's busy becoming the old lady with the twitching lace curtains who watches everything. (And, yeah, thinking about what that strip routine might look like. Are those real handcuffs?)</p>
<p>John Sheppard quit the Air Force in a last-ditch attempt to save his marriage, since there was a kid on the way. It didn't work, and in fact backfired spectacularly, so now he's left with child support payments and a mortgage on a house he doesn't live in (his dad's a dick), an ex-wife who still loves him enough to yank more little bits out of his heart every chance she gets, a kid he gets to see for a few hours every other week, and a job where he gets shot at almost as much as the one he used to love that he quit. (He's a cop. He's okay at it. That's a hard adjustment to make.)<br/>But at least his new downstairs neighbor is hilarious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hot Neighbor Watch

**Author's Note:**

> Update: I am marking this particular work as complete, and I am going to start a new plot arc in a new story. This does not mean that I will not continue all of the various plot arcs introduced in this story! I just think it's more manageable to split it as I go.   
> Thanks to everyone for reading so far. I'm having a blast. The sequel will have more Stargatey-plot stuff but I promise, I promise, I promise, there will still be a healthy percentage of smut, fluff, and Joey being not-obnoxiously adorable, because these are the reasons this story really exists. :)

The first time Rodney saw his upstairs neighbor, he almost fell down the stairs. 

He was headed out to buy a cup of coffee, since he’d run out of beans. It was oh-god-o’clock in the morning, because he’d been up all night chasing an idea, and wasn’t ready to wind down yet. And so it took him a moment, as he stood in the doorway fumbling with his pockets to make sure he really did have his keys (he’d already checked twice, but his short-term memory was so fried he couldn’t remember what the result of either check had been), to process what he was seeing as this vision in gray jersey bounded athletically up the steps.

“Hey,” the guy said, shooting him a pleasant smirk. Dark hair, fine jaw limned with dark stubble, slender but masculine neck, hazel eyes, long lithe torso, gorgeous mouth. “Nice day, huh?”

“What?” Rodney said, nearly dropping his keys, swaying forward in dangerous un-balance.

“Whoa there,” the guy said, and caught him by the shoulder with one long-fingered hand, shoved him back onto his center of gravity, laughed in a flash of teeth, nearly perfect but one slightly crooked in the lower jaw. He was beautifully just-off-perfect, a little scar across one cheekbone, the beginnings of crows’ feet around his eyes. He was tanned, flushed, sweat rolling down his temples— he’d been running, of all things, that explained the gray jersey and basketball shorts and the earliness of the hour.

“Wow,” Rodney said, “I really need that coffee.”

“You new here?” the guy asked. 

“Yeah,” Rodney said, “moved in last week.”

“Oh.” The guy beamed, a truly pleasant smile. He held out his hand, and Rodney shook it automatically. “I’m John Sheppard. I live in the second floor front apartment.”

“Rodney McKay,” Rodney said. “Dr. Rodney McKay. I, ah, first floor front apartment.” He jerked a thumb. Something in the guy’s face made him add, “Not a medical doctor.”

“Gotcha,” the guy said. “Hey, if you’re looking for coffee, due south about two blocks there’s this awesome joint, Java Temple— sounds kinda hippieish but whatever, man, they roast their own and it’s totally awesome.”

“Really,” Rodney said, perking up. “I just kinda, all-nighter, not done yet and I need to—“

“Corner of Allen and Franklin,” the guy said. “Can’t miss it. Run by lesbians with cats, who know all about coffee. How can you not love that?”

“Sounds like heaven,” Rodney said, staring entranced at the guy’s soft, full lips, thinking about heaven, thinking about how he needed not to fall down the stairs. 

“Nice to meet you,” the guy said. “Catch ya later. Don’t fall down the stairs.”

And with that and a cheeky grin, he was gone. 

 

Rodney’d stalked him, just a little bit. It took him a little while to puzzle out the odd hours, but finally he saw Hot Neighbor leaving the house in a cop uniform and figured it out. He wore the uniform fairly often, often enough that Rodney’s sort-of guilty fantasy that it was a stripper costume vanished. He also dressed in a random assortment of clothes in his downtime, with tightish jeans and really nerdy t-shirts appearing with mouth-watering frequency (including a gorgeous HAN SHOT FIRST specimen). His hair never changed, though— it stood up crazily in random directions with astonishing consistency, varying slightly in intensity and degree but never significantly in form.

He mostly didn’t notice Rodney watching him out of the front window as he went by. Rodney had sort of expected that now that he didn’t live in the middle of ass-nowhere he’d probably revert to heterosexuality, freed from the constraints of situational and somewhat-desperate homosexuality brought on by no social life apart from overwhelmingly male lab partners. But there was no doubt he was completely smitten with Hot Neighbor. And maybe, in normal civilian life, away from such constraints, well… maybe, Rodney was realizing, maybe he was actually genuinely non-desperation-dependently gay, as it happened. OK, bi; he still nearly got whiplash at least once a day when a pretty girl went by. Or a… _reasonable_ girl. Or just a really busty girl. Or a girl with a particularly cute haircut. Okay he really really wasn’t used to girls anymore. 

Shit, he never really had been. 

And yet. And yet! Hot Neighbor eclipsed them all. The lips, the throat, the narrow waist and slim hips, the lanky grace, the sarcastic eyebrow… the nerdy t-shirts. (Another one appeared the second week: REPUBLICANS FOR VOLDEMORT, done up like a real campaign sign in stars and stripes. Rodney bit his lip and actually whimpered out loud.) 

Rodney had no idea how non-desperation-homosexual relationships worked. Well, he hadn’t really any idea how homosexual relationships _at all_ worked either, as it happened. Handjobs under a lab bench, sure. Sloppy blowjobs when drunk off one’s ass, yeah. But… like… how did you know if a guy was gay?

Well, data point #1: there was the Java Temple. It was, indeed, run by lesbians and at least partially staffed by cats— a glorious long-haired gray tabby with a lion’s mane and gold eyes, and a beautiful if psychotic tortoiseshell shorthair. (She mostly didn’t let people pet her, but loved Rodney, which made him a little smug and made his own cat hissingly jealous. Cosmo _hated_ cats.) There were rainbow flags everywhere. Surly-sweet uncombed lesbians in sweatervests manned the counters; improbably pretty boys in incredibly tight jeans lounged together on the slightly-disreputable couches, filling the air with mannered laughter. It was definitely, definitely very gay. And it was the very, very first thing Hot Neighbor had mentioned about the neighborhood. 

If nothing else, Rodney thought hopefully, clutching his Enormous Americano Black With Sugar to his chest as he walked home, Hot Neighbor wasn’t actively opposed to the gays. Which was something. 

Then Rodney almost burned himself on his coffee turning his head to stare at a perky blonde woman’s perky ass, and she noticed and gave him stink-face, and he blushed and hurried home. It was Saturday, which meant, well, Hot Neighbor didn’t have a fixed schedule, but sometimes it meant that around this time of day he’d see him going off wherever he went— normally more along the wrinkled dress shirt and reasonable jeans spectrum of wardrobe. 

So he set himself up at his desk by the window, and worked, and watched the world go by. He was indeed rewarded with a Hot Neighbor sighting. Hot Neighbor was wearing reasonable jeans and a nerdy t-shirt— a faded drawing of Pac-Man— but he was holding the hand of a small child. Rodney blinked at this unexpected bit of data. 

The child was, well— Rodney didn’t know anything about kids, but this one looked maybe old enough to go to school, but not by much. It looked like maybe a boy, with short dark hair and a black t-shirt with the Batman sigil on it, and it was just beaming up at Hot Neighbor, tiny face split wide in a grin like Hot Neighbor was the most important person in the world. 

Hot Neighbor, Rodney had to note, was giving the child much the same look, if tempered by the apparently native sardonic cast to his face. “We just went to the science museum like, two months ago,” Hot Neighbor was saying. 

“But Dad,” the kid said, “I _love_ the science museum.”

“I know you do, buddy,” Hot Neighbor said as they came up the stairs. “Okay. But we’re not stayin’ there all day and I’m not buyin’ you half the gift shop again.”

The kid laughed, delighted, and Rodney stared at them: they had the same dark hair, the same curve to their mouths, the same straight, almost pointed nose. Well. Hot Neighbor had definitely known the touch of a woman at least often enough to sire offspring. How had Rodney never seen the kid before, though? Or the kid’s mom? Well, his vigil generally had consistent holes in it. If the woman worked nights, or traveled for business… well, hell, there were women who lived in this building, and Rodney didn’t notice all of them. If Hot Neighbor’s wife was brunette and not very busty and didn’t wear tight pants as a habit, it was perfectly possible that he wouldn’t have really noticed her at all. 

Devastated, Rodney gave himself the rest of the week off from Hot Neighbor Watch, and closed the blinds and played video games until his eyeballs about fell out. 

After that brief period of despondency, he decided to explore his new environs a little bit more, get out of the house, meet some people. He found that his brief research had indeed put him in a decent neighborhood— cheapish rent, but near a lot of really funky restaurants and kind of divey bars, with a place a few blocks away that had live music almost every day (none of it to Rodney’s taste, particularly, but it was still something). Lots of young folks with families, lots of… were they called hipsters nowadays? Rodney lost track. A fair quantity of frightening but interesting street people, and a refreshingly Canadian flavor to some of the accents and slang. Manners were pretty blunt and direct, but mostly fairly kind, an odd mix of East Coast and Midwestern, and decidedly Canada-like. But Rodney was no sociologist. The thing he cared most about was that almost every single restaurant within his range was locally-owned, most were very reasonably-priced, and all of them, every single one, had awesome chicken wings. And most of them had servers who listened with good-humored sincerity to his citrus rant. (That was the good thing about locally-owned— the recipes weren’t corporate secrets, and if you pestered enough, you’d probably eventually get the owner or at least master chef to come and glower at you while you earnestly and shrilly explained anaphylaxis.)

Rodney was probably gonna get fat, but it was a nice change from the food being all terrible and expensive, so he resigned himself to buying a new wardrobe. It wasn’t like he was gonna catch Hot Neighbor’s eye for his waistline alone, anyway. 

When he resumed Hot Neighbor Watch it was sort of accidentally. He’d caught a glimpse of the guy with a woman, but she was very obviously not the kid’s mom— she was black, and the kid pretty clearly hadn’t been. She was gorgeous, though, impeccably-styled and with a stunning smile when Hot Neighbor came to the door. This cast Rodney back into deep despondency, and he closed his blinds and played about twelve more hours of video games until they called and yelled at him for his lack of productivity. He blustered back at them, and hung up, collapsed into bed for about twenty hours, then dragged himself out and went back to work. 

But first— out for coffee. So he showered, shaved, put clean clothes on, pants even, and shoes, combed his hair like a reasonable human, and went out the door to Java Temple. 

 

 

The polo-shirted woman, uncombed brown hair scraped messily into a bun, tilted her head at John. Despite the fact that her attire and context screamed that she was a lesbian, she was responding perfectly to his flirty smirk. “And an ice cube in it,” she concluded, proving that she knew his order.

“Exactly,” he said. 

“We work so hard to make sure our coffee’s hot,” she said, almost pouting. She was actually pretty cute, if you liked the total lack of grooming aesthetic. Which wasn’t usually John’s scene, and who was he kidding, his dick pretty much had cobwebs on it, but it was fun to flirt.

“I got a bad tooth,” he said. “I just can’t drink it that hot. I appreciate how hard you folks work, though, believe me.” 

She fairly floated off to get his order, and John smirked a little to himself. He was old, damnably old, and a sad pathetic loser to boot, but he still got a gold star at flirting. Good for him. He dropped his change in the tip jar and leaned against the counter, scanning the room mostly by habit (he’d already halfway inventoried the people in the room when he came in— nobody had noticed him or reacted to him or changed their demeanor, so he hadn’t worried). 

His gaze alit on a somehow vaguely familiar slightly-receding hairline, over by the window. Pointy nose, pointy chin, broad shoulders, he knew that guy from somewhere. It came to him and he grinned. “Hey,” he said. “I know you.”

The guy looked up, a little startled— bright blue eyes, not the pale washed-out kind you usually saw— but his expression immediately shifted warmer. “Oh,” he said. “Yes.”

“You’re my downstairs neighbor,” John said. The barista, a little fawningly, handed him his cup, and he thanked her, dumped a little sugar and cream into it, stirred it, and walked over to where the guy was sitting. “So you found the place!”

“This place is awesome,” the guy said. Doctor something. M something. Mc something. “It is absolutely perfect.”

“What’s not to love?” John said. He hooked out the chair with one foot and sat down at the table. “So are you just new to the neighborhood, or new in town, or what?”

“I’m from Alberta,” the guy said, “and I’ve lived all over, but this is the first I’ve been to this city.”

“Welcome to town,” John said, grinning broadly. “I’m not from here either, but I’ve been here like ten years. People are always so damn surprised when they find out you’re not a native. Like there’s no reason to move here, or something.” He sniffed at his coffee, decided it was still too hot to drink. He had a cracked molar that the military dentists had never quite been able to sort out, and really hot or really cold stuff tended to feel like an ice pick to the jaw. “What brings you here, though?”

Doctor McSomething shrugged. “I work remotely,” he said. “I could log in from anywhere. So I figured, hell, why _not_ here?”

“Fair enough,” John said. “Nice natural scenery, climate that’s much better than the hype makes out, really excellent food, reasonable people, why not?”

“Exactly,” McSomething said. “Plus, for me, just far enough away from the main office that they won’t make me come in, but close enough that if I have to, it’s not a complete pain in the dick.”

That surprised a real laugh out of John, and he belatedly smothered it. “Good point,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “Ah, I gotta head out. Good seein’ ya.”

“Catch you later,” McWhatsit said.

 

Later that week, McKay (John looked at his mailbox to remember the name) almost ran into him on the steps again. John was just back from his run, again. This time, McKay didn’t look quite so glassy-eyed, though he was kind of distracted-looking. 

“Batman?” he said. 

John blinked at him. “How’d you guess my secret identity?”

“I meant the t-shirt,” McKay said. “I always liked Spiderman a little better.”

“What?” John drew the syllable out indignantly as he looked down to confirm that, yes, he was wearing his Batman shirt. “Pff! Eccentric, tortured geniuses over overly-earnest mutants anyday!” 

“I assume you’re not a Super Man fan then,” McKay said. He was wearing a gray, well-worn t-shirt that said, on the chest, “I’m with Genius” and had an arrow pointing up to McKay’s face. Subtle. Classy. John kind of liked it. This guy was okay.

“No,” John said. “He was a pretty transparent allegory, actually. Not a lot of character depth. They tried, but really. Ethereal alien-types, never really my scene.”

McKay looked a little shocked about something. “So, a comic books fan, not just movies?”

“Please,” John said. “If I had even half of what my old collection that my dad threw out was worth, I wouldn’t be worrying about my mortgage.”

“Ooooh,” McKay said, looking pained, “yeah.” But he was a little too bright, because the next thing he said was, “Wait, we live in an apartment.”

That had been a pretty careless slip. “Yeah,” John said, “that’s a long story.” He smiled tightly. “The classic TV show is my favorite, though. I watch it with my kid all the time but he’s too young to appreciate Julie Newmar.”

“I was never too young to appreciate Julie Newmar,” McKay said. 

“Linda Carter was much more of a formative experience for me,” John said. “Batman was in reruns by the time I was born, but Wonder Woman, that was on the air when I was old enough to watch. And the, with the stars on the shorts, and the boots, yeah. That’s definitely, like, primal id material there.”

“I don’t remember if it was first run or reruns or what, I don’t know when it was on Canadian TV,” McKay said. “But you’re right about the boots. Those were some boots.”

“Now I think about it,” John said, “my kid is the exact same age now that I was when Wonder Woman was on TV. Maybe he’s not too young to appreciate Julie Newmar.”

“Maybe she’s not his type,” McKay said. 

“Julie Newmar is everybody’s type,” John said. “He and I are gonna have to have a little father-son chat about this.” 

McKay’s face went a little shuttered and his chin went up, just a little. “Not all little boys have the same place in their psyche for an attractive woman,” he said, a little brittle. 

“Oh,” John said, realizing— McKay thought he was— “No, no, it’s not— God, no. No, I didn’t mean— if my kid turns out, you know, if it’s Adam West that’s more his type, good for him, as long as he’s happy. Jeez, that’s not at all what I meant.” McKay’s chin un-pointed slightly. “Or if he’s, y’know, more into Eartha Kitt, or whatever, that’s cool too. It’s okay, I just feel like Julie Newmar’s appeal transcends all that.” He realized he was making a vaguely waist-to-hip-ratio gesture in the air with both hands, and grimaced, pulling his hands back. “I mean… she’s so statuesque.”

McKay stared at him. “Did you just quote that movie where Patrick Swayze was a drag queen?”

John rubbed the back of his neck. “Is that what that’s from? Is that the one with the giant pink bus? God, wasn’t that, like, ten years ago? Wait, that was the other one. The pink bus was the other one. Hugh Laurie. No. Fuck. What’s his name? Elrond. Hugh whatsit. Hugo! Hugo Weaving.”

“How many movies about drag queens have you watched?” McKay asked, looking utterly fascinated. 

“There haven’t been as many, lately,” John said. “Seems like they stopped makin’ em. You know, I know this for completely innocuous reasons, I swear, but there’s a club like four blocks away that does drag shows on Saturday nights. I have only been there for work-related reasons, though.”

“Work-related?” McKay looked faintly incredulous. “Wait, what do you do?”

John stared at him, one eyebrow climbing as high as it could go. “I leave for work almost every day in a police officer’s uniform, what do you think I do?”

“You could be a stripper,” McKay said. His eyes widened almost immediately as he realized what he’d just said. “Uh— I mean— I didn’t mean that like it sounded.”

John blinked at him. “How did you know about that?” he demanded. 

McKay laughed, then sobered in confusion as he realized John’s tone was slightly off, and John realized, no, he didn’t. “Jesus,” John said, rubbing his face, “not you too.”

“What?” McKay asked timidly. 

“Like my second week as a cop I responded to a noise complaint from a party, and it was some lady’s 40th birthday party and she assumed I was a stripper,” John said. “Unfortunately I wasn’t there alone, and my then-partner told every single person in the entire department about it, and now there’s this whole five-year-long running joke about my night job. People who don’t even _know_ me laugh about it when I introduce myself because that’s how they’ve heard of me. Christ almighty, do I really look like a stripper?”

McKay’s mouth slanted strangely as he regarded John. “I was kidding, at least,” he said. “I didn’t know there was painful history. I’m sort of bad with people or maybe I’d’ve thought of that.”

John laughed. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I guess I should be flattered.” He jerked his head. “Gotta go get ready for work. See ya around.”

McKay looked at his watch. “It’s like, two PM.”

“Cops aren’t 9-5,” John said. “Otherwise it’d be pretty easy on crooks, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh,” McKay said. “Right.” 

John waggled his eyebrows a bit sarcastically at the guy, and went past him up the stairs. Gay nerdy genius. Not bad qualities in a neighbor. Not that he was sure why the gay part mattered. Maybe it didn’t.

 

 

He caught an elbow to the eye breaking up a bar fight at the lesbian bar. It was amazing, John thought, how many people at gay bars weren’t even gay. And how many of them made trouble. If the guy who’d hit him was a lesbian then so was John. As they wrote up their report in the aftermath, the bartender, who was carefully styled to fit the Sassy Twink mold (and made a good living at it, from the looks of things) sympathetically offered him a bag of ice. He took it gratefully and held it over his eye. 

“I’d offer you a drink, hot stuff,” the bartender said, too weary to really sound flirty, “but I know how dedicated you folks are.”

“Oh, I’d fall asleep,” John said, “but I appreciate the sentiment.”

The customers had largely dispersed— cops showing up generally had that effect on an establishment, and it was getting on toward the end of most people’s nights anyway— so there were no customers. The bartender leaned on the bar across from John. “You come around here much, friend?”

John gave him a wry half-smile. “I spend enough time on the clock in places like this,” he said, “when I’m off-duty I got no taste for it.”

“Gay places, or booze places?” the bartender asked. 

“Booze places,” John clarified. “The gay places don’t need police all that much. Not like the places on the Strip. It’s a nice change to get out here for once. This is my neighborhood, I live near here.”

“Oh,” the bartender said, eyebrows telegraphing fascination. The Strip was a three-block-long neighborhood populated largely by nightclubs, some gang-affiliated, some drug-affiliated, many both, some innocent, all rotten with underage kids on fake IDs and drug dealers and roofie rapists and knife fights and what-have-you. John spent a lot of Saturday nights getting increasingly sick of human beings on that strip, so catching an elbow in the gay neighborhood was almost worth it for the change of pace. “But you never come around?”

John shook his head. “I’m not what you’d call a social drinker,” he said. 

Bates fetched up against the bar next to him. “How’s the eye?” he asked. 

“Eh,” John said, pulling the ice away and squinting at him, “you should see the other guy.”

Bates didn’t laugh— he never did, not at John’s jokes anyway— but he half-smiled, which John was learning was about the same difference. “I was just thinkin’ we were gonna get away with no bar fights tonight,” he said. 

“Yeah,” John said, “keep dreamin’.” 

“You ready to blow this joint?” Bates asked. 

“Born ready, sir,” John said, even though he outranked Bates. Bates had been a Marine, and he and John had faced off like stray dogs, arm’s length, sniffing each other out, when John had joined the squad, but they’d mostly settled down now. Bates was a crazy son of a bitch with a stick up his ass, and John was a cocky no-account flyboy, and both of them had taken bullets in Afghanistan so they were brothers, after all. It was good enough. John had gotten the promotion to sergeant ahead of Bates, but it didn’t seem to have hurt the other guy’s feelings much. 

Bates jerked his head toward the door, and John turned back to give the bartender an easy little wave. “Hey, thanks for the ice, man. Catch ya around.”

“See ya,” the bartender said, giving him a little up-and-down look and some eyebrows. Was that a leer? Had the guy just leered at him? John put his hat back on and went out to the foyer.

“Got him,” Bates said. “He was makin’ time with the cute bartender.”

“Hot lesbian?” Mitchell asked, waggling his eyebrows.

“Naw,” Bates said, “the bartender here’s a dude.”

“Hey,” John said. “If somebody knew how to do a proper restraint hold I wouldn’t need to flirt with rent boys to get ice so I don’t wind up disfigured. You know I gotta keep that night job, this gig ain’t payin’ the bills.” Half-blinded by the ice bag, he tripped over the floor mat, kicked it flat again, and noticed a flyer on the foyer windowsill for a drag show. He bent to fix the rug properly, picked up the flyer, and stuck it in his pocket as the others went out. 

“You should probably stick to the middle-aged ladies,” Mitchell said. “I think they tip better than the homos.”

“I wasn’t really flirtin’ with him,” John said. “Jeez, you guys. Your interest in my sex life is kind of unhealthy.”

They split off to their separate cars, but Mitchell stopped, a hand on John’s arm. “Hey, Sheppard,” he said. He looked self-conscious. They didn’t know each other well, just overlapped sometimes on patrols like this. Mitchell was pretty new to the station, a transfer in from another station. 

“Yeah?” John asked, puzzled at the attention. 

“You’re not really hurt bad, are you?” Mitchell asked. 

“No,” John said, “just a bruise. Should be fine.”

The others had drawn away a little bit, and Mitchell leaned in slightly. “I don’t mean to be a prick,” he said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were actually gay. I wouldn’t make fun— I didn’t mean— I’m not _that_ kind of jerk.”

John blinked at him. “I’m not,” he said. 

“It’s okay if you are,” Mitchell said. “I didn’t mean— I got a lot of gay friends, and they call themselves homos, and I just got used to doing it too, but I wouldn’t— if it’s offensive, I didn’t mean that.”

“I’m not gay,” John said. “But I appreciate the sensitivity,” he added sincerely.

“Oh,” Mitchell said. “You’re not?”

“No,” John said. “But that’s okay. If you like me better that way, you can think of me that way. I won’t be offended.” He clapped Mitchell on the shoulder and walked to the car where Bates was waiting. They weren’t usually partners, but sometimes they patrolled together. John picked up a lot of extra shifts where he could, as much overtime as they’d let him do, so he wound up paired with just about everybody at some point. 

“Want to get a coffee?” Bates asked. 

John rubbed his good eye. “Eh,” he said, “I could take it or leave it.” 

“Mitchell wasn’t givin’ you shit, was he?” Bates asked, putting his turn signal on like the stick-in-the-mud he was as they waited for a car to go by so they could pull out of the lot. 

John snorted. “He was telling me it was okay that I was gay,” he said.

Bates shot him a look. John pulled the ice away from his eye. 

“I’m not,” he said. “That’s the punchline.”

Bates didn’t say anything for a moment. “I,” he said finally, “I kind of thought you were. And I was going to say, if he had a problem with it, then I have a problem with him.”

John stared at him, unexpectedly touched. “Thanks,” he said. “I… you know what, if I ever switch teams, that’ll mean a lot to me.”

“You let me know,” Bates said. “I mean, if you need help. Not if you switch teams. I kind of feel like that stuff’s need-to-know, and I don’t really need to know. But I mean. You know.” 

“I do know,” John said. He put the ice back up to his eye. “That’s very sweet. Thank you.” He sighed. “It’s all completely irrelevant, as it happens. Can your virginity grow back? Because after the divorce I just went through, I’m sort of considering joining a monastery and just never sleeping with anybody ever again.”

“Took me like that too,” Bates said. “I married my first wife when I was twenty-two and we were gonna be together forever. A year later, I was out on my ass, and I said I’d never date again. Married the second one when I was twenty-seven and I been with her ever since. Don’t give up.”

 “Ten years,” John said. “Ten years I was with her.” He mimed reaching into his chest, pulling out a beating heart (flexing his fingers rhythmically to show it beating), then rolled the window down and mimed throwing it out. “Now run it over, back up and run it over a couple more times.”

“That bad,” Bates said. 

“I gave up the Air Force,” John said. “She said, it’s flying or me, and I picked her, and that was okay for a little while, but it wasn’t really enough. Lost her anyway, and now the sky’s gone too. I got nothin’.” 

“Thought you had a kid,” Bates said. 

John took in a breath, let it out slowly. “Every other weekend, for a few hours, I got somethin’, I guess,” he said. “Guess I can’t regret that.” 

 

 

John had a crushing headache by the time he got home. He knew fine well that was a prime symptom of a concussion, and he also knew that he’d had several concussions and should really be cautious about getting any more. He also knew he was damned if he was going to take any of his sick days over it. He was saving those up, like he saved all his time off, to spend with Joey, if Nancy would ever let him have the kid that long. She talked a big line about wanting him to spend time with him, and flipped her shit if he ever had to reschedule from his normal two weekends a month, but God forbid he ever wanted to do anything with the kid but sleepovers and going to the park. And God forbid he wanted to spend a holiday with his son. Those were all reserved for family, and since he didn’t have any other family, apparently he didn’t count. 

He rested his head against his steering wheel for a moment. His eye was really throbbing but it hurt on the other side of his skull, too. Shit. That was like prime symptom number two of a concussion. At least he wasn’t nauseous. 

Yet. Shit.

 _Think nice thoughts about Nancy_ , he thought determinedly. There were very good reasons he didn’t spend holidays at Nancy’s house, and the number one reason was two Christmases ago when they’d put Joey to bed, together, and then had tumbled into Nancy’s bed, together, and fucked like rabbits for the rest of the night, and while it had been fleetingly pleasant (or, well, shit, fucking _awesome_ ), it had really just given her an opportunity to grind his heart further into the mud. The only consolation, which was sort of the opposite of a consolation, was that it had broken her up pretty badly too. 

Knowing she still had feelings for him was about as comforting as a nice firm kick to the nuts, so, John wasn’t counting it a victory. 

He slumped his way out of the car a little gingerly. Concussion meant no painkillers, meant limiting activity, meant no TV, meant sitting quietly in a dark room. Fat chance. He had eight hours off, then a twelve-hour shift again. But _that_ meant overtime, which meant money, which meant paying down that fucking mortgage faster and getting his father the fuck out of his life. 

The stairs needed to be salted, they had ice on the treads. He unlocked the door, grabbed the coffee can out of the bag of de-icer salt inside the door, and dumped salt onto the steps. The door swung shut behind him and he had to re-unlock it, muttering curses. 

As he fumbled for his keys again he encountered the crumpled flyer in his pocket. He pulled it out, frowned at it, remembered what it was, and laughed out loud, then folded it in half and stuck it into McKay’s mailbox. It lightened his mood a little, and he went into the house a little more cheerful.

McKay opened his door and poked his head out. “Is that you opening and closing and opening and closing the door?”

“Just de-icing the steps, McKay,” John said, unable not to grin at him. 

“Jesus Christ,” McKay said, recoiling from his face. “What the hell happened to you?”

John put a hand to his cheekbone, poking gingerly at it. “That bad, huh?”

“Did you get in a fight?” McKay asked, clutching at his apartment door like he was thinking of hiding behind it. 

John stared at him for a long moment. “Breaking up bar fights is a not-insignificant portion of my _job_ ,” he said. “So yes. I got hit in a fight.”

“Oh,” McKay said. He looked down suddenly. “No! No! Hey!”

John realized he was talking to the cat who was trying to scoot out into the hallway. McKay kept it from exiting by blocking it with his foot, and scooping it gently back into the apartment. “Ambitious,” John said. 

“She’s curious,” McKay said. “That’s what cats do.” He came out, shut the door behind him. Apparently he was committing to this conversation. He was wearing almost-hilarious plaid pyjama pants. “Anyway— are you okay, Sheppard?”

“I’m fine,” John said, a little touched that McKay would even ask. “Thanks. Just a black eye.”

“You off today, then?” McKay asked. “Just getting home, I mean?”

John huffed an ironic half-laugh. “I got eight hours off,” he said, “then I got another twelve-hour shift.”

McKay frowned. “I think maybe you work as much as I do,” he said. “That’s not right.”

“Money,” John said. “It’s overtime. Christmas is coming, I need the money.” Which was sort of a lie, he didn’t have anyone to shop for but Joey, but everybody always took that one at face value. It was the one time he didn’t feel weird about admitting he hustled so hard for extra shifts for money reasons. 

“Oh,” McKay said. “You got a big family, big holiday plans?” There was something almost wistful, a hard edge of false joviality, that told John pretty clearly that McKay didn’t. 

John slumped against the bannister post. “No, actually,” he said. “My only family’s Joey. And I don’t have custody of him for Christmas. He goes with his mom to spend it with her family.”

“Oh,” McKay said, perking up a little bit, and John grinned to himself a little bit at how easy it was to read McKay. He wasn’t just comforted that somebody else was a big loser and had nowhere to go for Christmas, he was trying to think of a way to ask if John wanted to hang out without sounding super pathetic. 

“Doesn’t look like you’re going anywhere cool for Christmas either,” John said. 

“No,” McKay said. “My— I don’t have anyone still alive who I’m on speaking terms with.”

“I’m working Christmas Eve to Christmas, the super-mega-overnight shift,” John said. “Figured I’d do the people with families a favor, and also make double overtime and a half. But I get out at noon. Come on up to my place and we can get totally fuckin’ hammered. Shit, I’ll even cook.”

“You can cook?” McKay asked. 

“Sure,” John said. “I mean, I know the basics, and then you just gotta follow written instructions. I’m decent at those, I did manage to get a college degree.” 

“In criminal justice?” McKay asked. 

John gritted his teeth and didn’t stop smiling. “No,” he said, “I actually have a B.S. in mathematics from Stanford.”

“You do?” McKay was comically astonished. 

“Yeah,” John said. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Anyway, I gotta go get cleaned up and catch a few z’s before my next shift. We’ll do Christmas, all clinical-depression style. What do you think, a ham and some potatoes and like a weird vegetable casserole like you see on old TV shows?”

“I’m deathly allergic to citrus,” McKay said.

“So, no pineapple glaze. But anything else?”

McKay stared at him. “Are you for real about this?”

“I am,” John said. “No presents, though. I’m shit at buying presents, don’t put that on me.”

 

The next day as he dragged himself home from his shift McKay was in the driveway messing with the garbage cans. John gave him a hand dragging them back up and stowing them behind the house. 

“Eye looks better,” McKay said. John gave him a look. “Okay, not really. It looks a lot worse. But it’s less swollen, right?”

“Yeah,” John said. “The color’s up now, but it hurts less.” He shrugged. 

“Did you leave a flyer in my mailbox or do I have an anonymous harasser?” McKay asked, squinting at him a little.

John laughed. “I’ll never tell,” he said. 

“Hmph,” McKay said. He paused to kick at a chunk of ice still adhering to the steps, then went up. John gestured him to go first, and followed him up, absently noticing that the guy had, like, a perfect ass. John wouldn’t have even thought that was a thing a guy could have, but McKay totally did. Huh.

“Hey,” John said. McKay was fumbling for his keys, and John had his out, so he edged past him and unlocked the building door. 

“Yeah?” McKay looked up at him. He was a couple of inches shorter than John, but much broader in the shoulders, just a real solid guy. John blinked. 

“Um,” he said, and shook his head. “Sorry, I lost my train of thought. I haven’t had a whole lot of downtime lately.”

“You didn’t get a concussion, did you?” McKay asked worriedly. “Because a blunt trauma to the eye socket like that could well cause a head injury. Did you get that checked?”

“Yes,” John lied. “It’s been checked.” He was still having headaches. It was all right, though. He just had to avoid taking any more hard shots to the head until this one was healed. 

Good luck with that.

He got the door unlocked, shoved it open with his shoulder, and went into the hall with McKay.

“What do you want me to bring to Christmas?” McKay asked. “That’s what I was going to ask you, once I settled my questions about the weird flyer. Or did you want to go to that show? Were you asking me to go with you? Because I don’t, I mean, I _would_ , if you wanted.”

John laughed. This guy made him laugh a lot. It was kind of nice. “No,” he said. “I just saw the flier and thought it’d be funny to stuff it in your mailbox. Since we had a conversation about that.” He shrugged. “I dunno, you don’t have to bring anything for Christmas. I already have all the stuff I’m gonna make.”

“Beer?” Rodney asked. 

John chewed his lips thoughtfully, leaning against the bannister pole. “I have wine,” he said. “And whiskey for Manhattans. I always have those on Christmas, never any other time.” He thought a little longer. “I know,” he said. “I haven’t had time to get anything for an appetizer. Could you bring, like, a cheese plate or something?”

“A cheese plate,” McKay said blankly.

“Yeah,” John said, gesturing vaguely. “You know. Like, weird cheeses, and crackers, and stuff. Like they always have lyin’ around at fancy occasions. Or is that weird?” He was suddenly self-consciously aware that his upbringing was approximately seven hundred million dollars removed from any semblance of normal. A cheese plate couldn’t be _that_ fancy, his mom had assembled them herself, and she never really did any of the cooking. “They don’t have to be, like, super fancy cheeses. Just, like, you know. Or whatever it is your people do for appetizers, I don’t know. Something that doesn’t need to be heated up or prepared in a time-sensitive fashion, that can just sit around and get picked at by drunk people.”

“Cheese plate,” Rodney said. “Where would I find a thing like that?”

“Grocery store,” John said, though he honestly didn’t know, now that he thought of it. He hadn’t known the slightest thing about where anything came from until he’d gone to college— and hadn’t _that_ been a hoot, his first trip to the grocery store with no clear understanding of how food worked before it was served to him— in desperation, he’d spoken only French and pretended to understand no English. It was the only way to pass off his befuddlement as anything other people could understand.

“I’ve never seen anything like that there,” McKay said suspiciously. 

“You can get ‘em,” John said. Now that he thought of it, yeah. The big grocery store in the nearest first-ring suburb had a whole cheese department. He snapped his fingers, remembering. “There’s a gourmet grocery store out on Elmwood,” he said. “They’re attached to the state’s largest liquor store. They have such weird shit there, it’s a hoot to go. Or the big W’s just off the highway. They have a cheese department. Or, hell, go to the little shop down the street and buy a block of each kind they got, and some Ritz. I really don’t care, I plan on being so fucking drunk I can’t see straight. I won’t know the difference, McKay. Do what you feel like.”

“Gourmet grocery store,” McKay said, a little dazed.

“What?” John said, uneasy. Did McKay think he was some kind of uptight pretentious prick now? “I don’t know, what do your people do for appetizers? Fruit? Quiche? I don’t care, man, I’m just riffin’ here.”

“No, no,” McKay said, belatedly noticing John’s discomfort. “I’m not saying that’s bad. I’m just, I just spent the last two years in fucking _Siberia_. The whole idea of a grocery store with a cheese department, let alone a whole separate store just for fancy shit, is blowing my mind.”  

John laughed again. This was probably the most he’d laughed in about a week. Since the last time he’d seen Joey, anyway. That sobered him up. He wasn’t going to see Joey until after New Year’s. Nancy was taking him to his grandmother’s for the big family reunion. That he used to be welcome at, and had spent a lot of happy years at. 

“I bet,” he said, a little feebly, remembering the conversation he’d been in the middle of. “Hey, I’m beat. I’ll see you around, hey?”

“Are you all right?” McKay asked worriedly, peering at him.

John managed a half-smile. “Nothin’ a shower and some sleep won’t fix, McKay. See you Christmas, if not before.”


	2. Christmas Clinical-Depression Style

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rodney brings a cheese plate. John cooks Christmas dinner. They drink, play Xbox, use John's kid to whip up a hilarious family feud (which, as everyone knows, is the true meaning of the holidays), and realize that maybe there's more to this relationship than mutual amusement.

 

John limped up the steps, exhausted as hell, and let himself into the house. The curtains twitched, and he grinned at the window, knowing Rodney was on the other side. He waved, and the curtain twitched again and Rodney looked out and waved back.

John stopped off at Rodney’s door, and it opened almost as soon as he knocked. “Hey,” Rodney said. 

“Hey,” John said. He was really tired. He was also filthy. “I’m gonna go shower and change into normal clothes. Wanna pretend it’s Christmas morning? I got a thing about pyjamas on Christmas.”

“You want to make this a pyjama party?” Rodney looked flustered.

“Wear what you want,” John said, shrugging. “I’m wearin’ pyjamas.” 

“Hey,” Rodney said. “I have an Xbox. Should I bring it up?”

John actually felt his face light up. “Really? Fuck yes! TV always sucks on Christmas.”

“I’m bored of all my games on single-player mode,” Rodney admitted. 

“You bring that up, I’ll go get the mulled wine started and get that shower. Gimme, like, 20 minutes,” John said. “I gotta get stuff in the oven and all but it’s all ready to go.”

“Mulled wine,” Rodney said. 

“Yeah, it’s the shit,” John said. “And yes, I know the traditional recipe includes orange peel, so I didn’t buy pre-made, I made it from scratch without orange peel or lemon juice. It might be a little sweeter than normal but I put more rum in it to make up for it. It should be fine, and it definitely won’t kill you.”

Rodney stared at him. “You’re, like, good at this,” he said. 

“Wait’ll you taste dinner,” John said, and swung away to go up the stairs.

 

Rodney showed up with the cheese plate John had told him to bring, and a couple big canvas shopping bags full of mysterious things. John was still in just a towel, having been distracted by the pot on the stove. Rodney let himself in, put the plate down on the kitchen table, and stood as if turned to stone, staring blankly. John half-turned. “Hey,” he said, nodding at the cheese plate, “looks good.”

“You said pyjamas,” Rodney said faintly, “not _naked_.”

John laughed. “I’m gettin’ to it,” he said. “Hold your horses. I was just making sure I had all the ingredients in this, I don’t know how it’s gonna be without the orange peel or Cointreau. I assume you’re allergic to Cointreau too?”

“I don’t know what Cointreau is,” Rodney said faintly, staring at John’s approximate waist area. OK, this mostly just confirmed John’s nagging feeling that Rodney was attracted to him, but it wasn’t really surprising. Lots of people thought John was attractive but didn’t particularly want to do anything about it, and he was kind of used to alternating pretending not to notice with shameless but completely idle flirting. It did not translate into getting any action, ever. He’d never really tried, with a man. Maybe they’d be more receptive. 

“Cointreau is an orange-flavored liqueur,” John said. “I mean, artificial orange flavoring would probably be fine, but what if it wasn’t? It’s probably not worth it. Anyway, I looked it up and Cointreau’s made with real oranges so that’s death in a bottle. I dunno about the knockoffs— they’ve got artificial flavoring, but who knows what’s _in_ the artificial flavorings? I guess most of the drinks that use it are paired with lime anyway so you already know not to try them.”

“I don’t drink mixed drinks,” Rodney said. “When I go to bars I just stick to beer. Bottled beer. They can’t really screw that up.”

John grinned at him. “Good thinkin’,” he said. “But you’ll have some of this, right?”

“Oh,” Rodney said, “sure, of course. I like, um, I like stuff, I just, you know. Death. Paranoia.”

“Understandable,” John said. He gave the pot another stir, stuck the lid on it, and went to the bedroom. “Back in a sec, I should put some pants on.”

Rodney definitely watched him go. It felt kind of nice, generally, to be looked at like that. John untucked the towel as he walked through his bedroom door and let it slip off just as he stepped out of view, and was rewarded with a very strangled almost-yelp of surprise from the kitchen. 

By the time he came back out, in a faded t-shirt and respectable striped cotton pyjama pants, Rodney was composed again, sitting on the kitchen chair and poking at the cheese plate. “What’d you get?” John asked. 

“Oh,” Rodney said, “I went down to the gourmet grocery store you mentioned and just went nuts in the cheese aisle. I don’t even know what half of this stuff is, but they had samples out everywhere so I bought whatever tasted good. I sort of can’t get over how nice people are here, though.”

John laughed. “They are,” he said. “Oh! Is that manchego?”

Rodney shrugged. “That sounds familiar,” he said. “I don’t really know.”

“Manchego,” John said, taking a chunk of it, “is fabulous with figs. Don’t ask me why, it just is. It’s a Spanish thing. It’s amazing.”

“I don’t have any figs,” Rodney said, a little downcast. 

“That’s cool,” John said, “but I’m just sayin’, if you ever get it again, you think it’s good like this? It is. But with figs? Holy crap. It’s like a whole new world.”

“I never knew you were a gourmet cheese fancier,” Rodney said. 

“I spent a lot of my childhood at really boring cocktail parties,” John said, “and that’s as much as I care to get into about that.” He smooshed a chunk of Brie onto one of the fancy crackers and shoved it into his mouth, then went to the cupboard and got out two approximately equal-sized mugs, got the ladle from the canister on the countertop, and served the mulled wine. 

“Now,” he said, holding out one of the mugs to Rodney. “Let’s get fucked-up. Happy Christmas.”

Rodney grinned, clicked his mug against John’s, and carefully sipped at the drink. “Wow,” he said. “This stuff’s good.”

“Oh,” John said, “I know. And it’s never worth making for one person. I learned about it in Germany, they call it Gluhwein and you get it at the Christmas markets. I used to wander around those things for hours.”

“Spent a lot of time in Germany, have you?” Rodney asked. 

“Stationed at Ramstein for two years,” John said. “Non-sequential years, mind, but two. I liked it there, it’s a huge base so there was always something going on. Back when being military didn’t just mean endless deployments to the kinds of sandy places that don’t have the drinks with the little umbrellas.”

“I thought Rammstein was a band,” Rodney said. 

John snorted. “No,” he said, “the band was named after the air base. More properly, it was in pretty tasteless reference to a catastrophic airshow accident that happened at the base in the 80s.”

“Oh,” Rodney said. 

John sat in the other chair and looked at the cheeses. “Chevre,” he said. “I love that stuff.”

“I’m glad I took you seriously about the fancy cheeses,” Rodney said. “I have no idea what most of this stuff is.”

John shrugged. “It’s not like I’m fussy,” he said. “I appreciate the fancy stuff, but plain old sharp cheddar’s a great comfort to me in times of trouble.” 

“I have to admit,” Rodney said, “I actually really like airplane food, hospital food, MREs, that sort of thing, so my taste is probably completely undeveloped. It’s not that I don’t love all food, it’s just, you know. Processed food has ingredient lists, and you can eat it when you’re distracted.”

John made a face. “I’ve eaten a lot of MREs,” he said. “I don’t mind ‘em once in a while, but they get tedious in the long haul.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had to subsist on them for longer than a couple of days,” Rodney said. “But, left to my own devices, I’ll eat the same thing every night for a month and not mind, so I might actually be fine on MREs all the time.”

“Eventually,” John said, “they affect your… digestion. At the… lower terminal.” He grimaced delicately. “We sometimes called ‘em Meals Refusing to Exit. Among other charming nicknames.”

“Huh,” Rodney said. “I don’t think I’ve ever subsisted on them long enough to notice anything like that.”

“Lucky,” John said. “Enough talk about lower terminals. How hungry are you? I was figuring on dinner at like three or so.”

“I’m pretty much always ready to eat,” Rodney said. “So any time is good for me.”

“I can move it up,” John said, gathering himself to get up. He was so tired, though, and sitting down felt so good. Fortunately he’d anticipated this and most of the prep work was already done, he just had to put things into the oven. 

“No, no,” Rodney said. “Finish your drink. Tell me more about cheese.” He eyed John’s head. “Tell me how your hair is already doing that.”

John put up a hand. His hair felt just about like normal, nearly dry now. “It pretty much always does that,” he said.

“I figured there had to be at least two kinds of hair product involved,” Rodney said. 

John shook his head. “No,” he said. “Sometimes I make the attempt, but I figured, for a day I’m figuring on spending in pyjamas, I’m not going to bother. This is sans product.”

“If anything, it’s fluffier,” Rodney said. 

“Yeah,” John said. “Gel doesn’t lie it down, but it kind of, spikes it a bit, so it’s not just this wall of crazy.” He knocked back the last of his wine, stood up, and pulled casserole dishes out of the fridge. He turned the oven on to start warming, and started pulling plastic wrap off of things. 

“That’s a lot of food,” Rodney said. 

John gave him a look. “You’re taking half the leftovers, man. That’s how this works.”

“It, um,” Rodney said uncertainly. “You, um. You went to a lot of trouble.”

John grinned, and turned back to his casserole, pulling out the crackers and the Pyrex mixing cup and the juice glass he used as a pestle. You couldn’t put the crumb topping on too far ahead or it got soggy. “I like this stuff,” he said, “but I can’t possibly eat it all on my own. If I didn’t have someone to cook for, I’d be microwaving a Lean Cuisine and getting maudlin about the dinners I used to make back when I had a family.”

Rodney turned his glass around in his fingers, and stuffed another hunk of cheese into his mouth. His table manners weren’t great. John really shouldn’t find it cute, but he did. “You don’t eat Lean Cuisine,” Rodney said. 

John laughed. “I do sometimes,” he said. “But you’re right, I probably just wouldn’t eat anything. Alcohol has enough calories to keep you alive a while.”

“Oh,” Rodney said glumly, “I know that.”

John paused to pour himself another mug of wine, and another for Rodney. “Speaking of which,” he said. “Cheers.”

They’d finished the wine (a 750ml bottle plus 6 oz spiced rum plus assorted spices) by the time John had everything in the oven, so they moved on to Manhattan cocktails (a nostalgic favorite of John’s grandfather, dimly remembered in the taste of the cherries John had illicitly been given sometimes, far too young to appreciate their whiskey burn). 

By the time dinner came out of the oven they were tipsy and every story was hilarious. Rodney led with the tale of how, at age eleven, the CIA confiscated his science fair project and detained him for suspected terrorism. John countered with the story of how, as a 1LT stationed in Germany, he and two friends drunkenly hopped a train and wound up, sans papers, in Belgium, nearly causing an international incident. Rodney came back with the time he and a coworker snuck out behind the lab and accidentally got locked out, in Siberia, in the middle of the night, in winter, and in order not to die they had to break into the secure facility, triggering the response of the Russian equivalent of a SWAT team. 

“Hold up,” John said, getting the plates out, but got distracted before he could finish the thought. “Oh, there’s wine for with dinner too. Hang on.” He paused, got the bottle out, had a little more trouble opening it than he expected, and set it on the table with the real wineglasses.

“You actually own real wine glasses,” Rodney said, a little awestruck.

“I’m a grown-ass man,” John said. “I wasn’t born in a barn. I have reasonable shit. Sometimes.” He’d had quite nice things, accumulated over the years, but he’d left them all with Nancy in the big house, and had moved out with a duffel bag and three boxes of crap. That was it. He turned back to the oven, and remembered— dinner. Right. “So back up a second. What the hell do you do for a living that they sent you to Siberia?”

“I’m an astrophysicist,” Rodney said. 

“Astrophysics,” John said. He’d assumed computer programmer. “Like, what, telescopes, radioscopes, black holes. You gotta go to Siberia for that?”

“Well,” Rodney said, looking uncomfortable. “I… government.” He flapped a hand. “You’d be amazed what kind of weird shit they get up to. And, er, I get up to. Top-secret weird shit.”

“That you can do from your first-floor apartment in the gay neighborhood of a small American city,” John said. 

“This is the gay neighborhood?” Rodney asked. 

“Sort of,” John answered. “I mean, hipsters too. And aging hippies with aspirations toward artisticness. I figured I’d get less trouble in this neighborhood than in the suburban ones where your lawn’s gotta be all nice and shit.” He pointed at Rodney. “Changing the subject! So you look at planets? Only you don’t have a telescope!”

“I kind of, I was involved in, um, deep-space telemetry,” Rodney said. “And there was some kind of mandated knowledge exchange with the Russians. It was political. I was pretty much getting banished. Because I screwed up something on a project and pissed off someone highly-placed.”

“Oh,” John said, “I know about that kind of shit.” He leaned over, filled their wineglasses, and clinked his against Rodney’s. “King fuckup, that’s me.”

He dished up the food and was distracted by the noises Rodney made as he ate, little hums and mms and gasps of pleasure. His table manners were terrible, but the enthusiasm made up for it. “This is really good,” Rodney said. “I mean, like, really good!”

John laughed. “It’s pretty simple food,” he said. 

“It’s amazing,” Rodney said. “I mean, like, amazing.”

“You’d think you’d never had a home-cooked meal before,” John said. There was a moment, and he looked up from his plate to see Rodney staring blankly off into space. “What?”

“I’m trying to remember the last time I had one,” he said. He shook his head. “My mom wasn’t, she didn’t cook, and my dad would grudgingly microwave TV dinners for us, but I never, we never ate like this, not even for holidays.” He gestured at the plate. “And I went off to college really young, and when you’re getting two doctorates before you’re 21 you don’t have time for things like sleeping or cooking or actually, really for eating at all, which is why I was so skinny then I guess.” 

John blinked at him for a long moment. “Nobody’s ever cooked for you,” he said. 

“Not often,” Rodney said a little uncomfortably. “I feel like I should’ve at least blown you by now.”

John was startled into a real guffaw. “I admit, that was not something I had planned on for tonight.”

Rodney blushed, and John laughed harder, but took pity on him and ended the moment by standing up to get Rodney seconds of everything, and refilling their wineglasses. By the time dinner was over they’d moved from tipsy to trashed. Perfect time to set up the Xbox. 

John had to get one of these things. He played video games sometimes with Joey on the computer but this was much cooler. McKay was a gifted trash-talker, truly in his element. He dominated the games at first, but as John caught on to the controllers his old reflexes and hand-eye coordination came back, and he started catching up. Finally he soundly thrashed McKay, and as the final score came up he stood up. “ _Wooo_ ,” he hooted. “Who’s still got it?”

“How the hell are your reflexes this good when you’re this drunk?” McKay demanded. “Are you cheating?”

John flopped back down on the couch. “You’re looking at a man who’s logged hundreds of flight-hours in an F-16,” he said. “You want hand-eye coordination, baby, you know what, I’m certified on every helicopter the Air Force flies. Hand, foot, _and_ eye coordination, in three dimensions, while getting _shot_.”

“Shot at?” Rodney suggested. 

John rolled up his right sleeve, showing the thick seam where they’d had to go in to repair the shattered bone. “Shot,” he said. “I’m not that trashed. I meant what I said. I took three bullets before I crashed that bird, and even then it was only ‘cuz the turbines went out.”

“Whoa,” Rodney said, gratifyingly awed.

“Didn’t end well,” John admitted after a moment, letting the controller fall onto the cushion next to him. He got up and went into the kitchen, discovering that the second bottle of wine was empty. “Shit,” he said. “Another Manhattan?”

“Leave the vermouth out of it,” Rodney said, “and we’re talkin’.”

“I likes the cut of your jib,” John said. He rarely let himself get this drunk. He was warm and loose-limbed and happy. 

“Are we pirates, now?” Rodney asked. 

“Arr,” John said, sloshing whiskey into their tumblers and dropping ice cubes carelessly in. He put a maraschino cherry into his, just for old times. That was about as much pirate-speak as he could stand, though. “No. No pirates. I just like the cut of your jib. Is that not a thing people say?” He handed Rodney the tumbler, and held out his class to clink in a wordless toast. 

“It’s a thing pirates say,” Rodney said. 

“Well, shit,” John said, “I’m a flyboy, not a sailor, I don’t know any more pirate lingo. C’mon, let’s go see what other games I can learn to kick your ass in.”

 

John’s phone rang as he was delivering the coup de grace to McKay yet again. He let it ring twice while he mashed the controller, but gave it up as a bad job, knowing this was likely to be his one shot at talking to Joey. He grabbed his phone and ignored the screen while Rodney gleefully destroyed his distracted avatar.

“Heeey,” he said. 

“Merry Christmas!” said Nancy and Joey together. It was her parents’ number; they were using the house phone so they could each have an extension of it. John could picture them, Joey cradling the cordless in both hands and Nancy sitting on the floor next to him with the kitchen receiver. 

“Hi, guys,” he said. 

“I got a Lego X-Wing fighter!” Joey said. 

“A Lego X-Wing fighter!” John said. “Did Santa bring that?” Of course he’d bought it himself. He felt a little smug that it was the thing Joey was excited enough to tell him about instantly. Unless Nancy had prompted him to. There was that. Nice of her to bother, if so.

“Yeah!” Joey said. “It’s so cool! Mom said I should wait to put it together until I see you but that’s not gonna be for _ages_.” Joey’s pout was audible. 

“You can put it together without me if you want,” John said, suppressing a pang. “I know it’s not gonna be for ages. Just bring it, I wanna see it. But I know that’s way too long for you to have to wait.” He’d realized that as he was wrapping the thing; he’d bought it ages ago, before he’d known this year’s holiday schedule. “I think something Santa brought me might go with it, but I don’t know. I shook the box and it sounds an awful lot like Legos. I bet it matches. We can put that together when you come visit.”

“I want you to be here now, Daddy,” Joey said, and started to cry.

“Hey,” John said, “hey, hey now,” and he was drunk enough to be really distressed. 

“I miss you,” Joey sobbed. 

John bit his lip, unexpectedly emotional. “I miss you too, baby,” he said.

“Joey,” Nancy said, “honey, you’ll see him really soon.”

“I’m not a baby,” Joey said reflexively.

John couldn’t help but laugh. “I know you’re not, buddy, but when you cry sometimes I forget. C’mon, buddy, it’s Christmas. All your cousins are there, your aunts and uncles, your Grandma. There’s nothin’ to cry about.”

“I want _you_ to be here,” Joey said, and he was still just a little bit too young to be being calculatedly bratty about it. 

“I wish I could be,” John said. 

“But you’re having fun, at least,” Nancy said, a little frazzled edge to her voice. And it was part of their deal. They never talked about how lonely they were. They never badmouthed each other. It mostly worked out. 

“I am,” John said. “I’m hangin’ out with my friend Rodney. Joey, you gotta meet him, he has an Xbox. We’re having a blast.”

“Really,” Nancy said.

“An Xbox!” Joey sounded excited, pout forgotten. “Cool!” There was a beat. “What’s an Xbox?”

Both John and Nancy laughed at that. “Yeah, really,” John said. “I’ve had a bottle of wine and half a bottle of whiskey and an actually quite nice Christmas dinner. We’re in our pyjamas and having a video game tournament and acting like nine-year-olds. It’s the most fun I’ve had in ages. Have you been playing with your cousins, Joey?”

“Yeah,” Joey said. “I wanna come to your party!”

“We can do it again when you come,” John said, and looked over at Rodney, who was fiddling with the video game controller, messing around with the game menus. “Hey,” he said to Rodney, “can we do this again when Joey comes? He wants to play.”

“Maybe with less whiskey,” Rodney said, squinting at him one-eyed. 

John laughed. “Maybe with less whiskey, Rodney says,” he relayed for Nancy’s benefit. “He’s probably right about that. Whiskey tastes yucky until you’re about 25. I think it’s a chemical thing. We’ll have juice instead, Joey.”

“Mommy was drinking whiskey before, I know what it is,” Joey said. “It smells terrible.”

“Yeah,” John said, “it is terrible. I don’t know.” He eyed his glass. It was getting empty again.

“Mommy was drinking _one glass_ of whiskey,” Nancy said a little defensively. 

“Pff,” John said, “Daddy had a heck of a lot more than one glass. It’s Christmas, it’s time to do things like that. Tomorrow I’ll have an awful headache and only myself to blame. Maybe Santa can get me some aspirin on his way out.”

“Did Santa bring you anything cool?” Joey asked. 

“Santa doesn’t bring grown-ups much,” John said. The opposite; he was pretty damn broke. “A ham. I got a ham. I ate it, though. He left you some stuff. Just little stuff, that he forgot to drop off where you are. I bet you got a pretty good haul of loot, over there.”

“I got some good stuff,” Joey said. “I mean, like socks and things. But a Lego X-wing fighter! And a Lego police car. Uncle Tom said it was like the one you use at work.”

“It probably is, buddy,” John said. “That’s a lot of Legos.”

“Daddy, Aunt Clarice said she never thought you were good for much anyway,” Joey went on, perplexed. “What does that mean?”

“Joey,” Nancy said sharply, but Joey went on.

“She said you were best as an ornament,” Joey said. “That doesn’t even make sense, you’re too big to put on a tree.”

“Ha,” John said weakly, shocked and gutted. Clarice was an ungrateful fucking traitor. The third Christmas he’d been with Nancy he’d come home badly injured, and they’d stayed with her parents a while. Clarice and Tom’s second child, Jenna, had been a sickly newborn, and they’d been run ragged and exhausted trying to give her the 24-hour attention she needed while caring for their 2-year-old. John had taken over care of the infant, since he was injured too badly to sleep more than an hour or so at a time now that they’d weaned him off the morphine, and he and Jenna had lived on the couch for a week, with him feeding her hourly or so until she’d begun to grow out of the developmental crisis her deformed esophagus had caused. 

“I told her not to talk about you that way,” Nancy said quietly, regretful. “She and Tom are going through a bit of a rough patch and I think she’s bitter about a lot of things. I think they’ll get through it okay, but she’s been distracting herself by imbibing heavily and picking at other people. The things she said weren’t very nice, Joey, and I’m not going to explain them.”

“She said, _mmmph_!” Joey said, and Nancy must have actually physically muffled his mouth. Joey made an indignant noise, then squeaked with laughter; Nancy was tickling him now. 

“You rascal,” she said, and there was a general scuffle. “You’re trouble, you are,” she said, some distance from the receiver. John tried to pull himself together. It didn’t really matter what Clarice thought of him. She’d also been slightly too creepy about making jokes about what a hunk John was when Nancy had first brought him home, and had crossed all kinds of uncomfortable lines during that first visit. It probably shouldn’t be surprising that she figured Nancy had only wanted him for his looks. 

Nancy came back on the line, laughing; Joey’s laughter was audible close to the receiver, and John could picture how they’d look, both breathless, Joey in Nancy’s lap, the phone cradled between her shoulder and ear and his head against her chest. It hurt. It fucking hurt, how empty his arms felt in that moment; it felt astonishingly like being stabbed in the chest had, that one time it had happened to him, and he tried to breathe through it without much success. 

“John,” she said. “I’m glad you’re having a fun day.”

“I miss you,” Joey said again, quietly. 

“I know, honey,” John said. “I miss you too. I miss all of you. Say hi to everybody. And do me a favor. Go give Aunt Clarice a big wet sloppy kiss on the mouth and say it’s from me.”

“John,” Nancy said, snorting as she tried to suppress a giggle. “Joey. Don’t do that.” 

“I’m gonna go do it right now,” Joey said.

“Go, buddy, go!” John said. 

“Yeah!” Joey said, tearing off audibly across the house. 

Nancy laughed helplessly, squeaking as she tried to catch her breath. “Oh Jesus, John, she’s gonna kill me.”

“It’s her own damn fault,” John said. “She’s got kids, she fuckin’ _knows_ better than to say shit in front of ‘em.”

Nancy sighed. “I suppose it’s what she deserves, then,” she said. After a moment she said, “Are you really okay, today, John? I, it really feels wrong not to have you here, and I’m sorry—“

“We both know why I can’t come,” John said, shivering a little at a vivid sense memory of Nancy’s body pressed up against his; last time he’d come to Christmas, the year before last, they’d gotten tipsy and slept together and it had been awesome at the time but absolutely terrible the next day when they, of course, remembered they were still divorced for really good reasons. “And yeah, I’m okay.” He was sort of surprised to realize that he was. He really hadn’t had time to feel sorry for himself today. It was a lot better than last year. Except that now he was horny. _God damn your perfect tits, Nancy,_ he thought half-heartedly. 

“You haven’t mentioned Rodney before,” Nancy said, and there was something oddly too careful in her tone. 

“He’s my downstairs neighbor,” John said. “He’s a, um, he’s an astrophyka— astrophasasa,” he broke off, laughing. “Shit, I’ve had a lot of whiskey.”

“Astrophysicist,” Rodney said. 

“What he said,” John said. Nancy was laughing. “Deep space telemetry,” John went on. “I can pronounce that. Telemelemelemetry.” 

“Deep space telemetry,” Nancy said. 

“Yeah,” John said. “He’s great, we hang out. Take turns de-icing the steps. You know. Neighborly.”

“And drink whiskey,” Nancy said. 

“I’m fuckin’ wasted,” John said. “And yet. And yet. I’m still pretty damn good at video games. The ol’ hand-eye coordination— maybe I’ve been grounded a few years, but I’ve still got it.”

“I cost you that too,” Nancy said, very quietly. 

There was a pause. “You’re drunk too,” John said. 

Nancy sniffled, very slightly. “A little,” she said. “The Air Force would take you back, John.”

“No,” he said, and this time it felt a little more like being stabbed in the gut. “No, Nancy, they wouldn’t. Hey. You can’t regret things like that. Buck up, lady, the kid’s gonna come back in a second and he’s gonna think I’ve been yellin’ at you.”

“Of course,” she said a little thickly. “I just, John. I regret, I do, so much, hurting you like I did.”

“Stop it,” he said sharply. “I mean that. Stop it.”

“Right,” she said. “Right. Sorry. Right. You’re absolutely right.” As she was repeating herself, the pounding of feet came, accompanied by raucous laughter. 

“Uncle John!” a girl’s voice yelled. That had to be Jenna, now. She was… could she be ten? “Hi, Uncle John!”

“Hi, Jenna,” John said. 

“Hi! Hi! Hi!” insisted another voice, very young. It had to be the youngest cousin, Nancy’s sister Samantha’s almost-2-year-old daughter Maureen. 

“Hi, little Mo,” John said. 

“Hi, Daddy!” Joey said. “I did what you said! And Aunt Clarice got really red and Uncle Tom laughed at her, and she said swears, Daddy. It was really funny. And then she said you were a man-slut, what’s that mean?”

“Jesus,” Nancy said. 

“You know what,” John said, “I don’t know what that means either. You should maybe ask her, since she said it. Maybe all you kids should ask her.” 

“No!” Nancy said. “Oh God. Kids, that is _not_ a Christmas word. We don’t say that word on Christmas. God _damn_ it, Clarice, I will _murder you myself_.” Her voice rose into a yell.

“Man-slut!” the two-year-old yelled, more or less intelligibly.

“That’s not very Christmassy,” John said, amused now. The howling pack moved off, taking Nancy with them.

“They’re gonna go yell at Aunt Clarice,” Joey said, smug. “What she said about you, it wasn’t nice, was it?”

“Your Aunt Clarice is going through a hard time,” John said charitably. “She needs extra love from you. You should go snuggle right up in her lap, if she even lets you near her. And tell her your dad says she should cut down on her drinking a bit and not be such a foul-mouthed biddy.”

“Foul-mouthed biddy,” Joey said. “Is that a swear, Daddy?”

“No,” John said truthfully, “it absolutely is not.” 

“I gotta go,” Joey said. “There’s a lot of noise, I gotta go see what they’re doing.”

“You give her my message after everything calms down,” John said. “Wait until nobody’s crying. And do, really, be sweet to her. She’s having a hard time. Tell her it was hard for me, too, but no matter how strong the temptation, stay away from the drink. I’m concerned for her, Joey. I really am.”

“Okay, Daddy,” Joey said. He’d stopped paying attention. “I love you, I gotta go.”

“Okay,” John said. “Merry Christmas buddy.”

“Merry Christmas, Daddy,” Joey said, and there was a clattering noise as he tried and failed to hang up, then tried again and succeeded.

John shut his phone and howled with laughter. 

“Did you just use your kid to whip up a family feud?” Rodney asked, a little bug-eyed. 

John nodded, wheezing. “Clarice is such a fucking _bitch_ ,” he said. “She started it. She deserves everything she gets.”

“You’re diabolical,” Rodney said. 

“She called me a man-slut right to my kid’s face!” John said. “Ungrateful bitch, I saved her baby’s life and this is how she repays me?” 

“You saved her baby’s life?” Rodney asked. 

“Long story,” John answered. He stood up. “C’mon. Let’s have another round.”

 

John was sprawled on his back on the couch, legs stretched out across the floor, X-box controller just beyond the reach of his fingertips, still wheezing with the dregs of a mighty laughing fit over nothing in particular. “But,” Rodney said, “but,” and lost his train of thought. 

“Ha,” John said, twitching helplessly with laughter, “ha ha, butt!”

“But,” Rodney said, confused, and then clapped his hand over his eyes. “Oh! You are twelve.”

“Butt!” John squeaked. 

“God we’re so drunk,” Rodney said. He looked so unusually happy, flushed and relaxed and just somehow beautiful. 

John sat up and flopped down across Rodney, reaching over him for the remnants of the cheese plate they’d brought in and continued to demolish in their drunken carousing. “Hey,” Rodney said indignantly. Unperturbed, John stretched out across his lap and munched unhurriedly on chevre. 

“Comfy,” John said. 

“I am not a sofa,” Rodney said, a little uncomfortably. 

“Mm,” John said, wriggling a little farther across him and settling in. “Warm.” He was mostly on Rodney’s chest, partly on his lap, and it was more physically demonstrative than he usually was, but it felt right.

“You’re heavy,” Rodney tried, shoving half-heartedly at him, but his arms wound up around John’s torso, not at all budging him. 

“Mm,” John said. He wriggled, and turned onto his side, and now it was more his chest that was pressed against Rodney’s, and much of the length of his flank was in Rodney’s lap. “Not much of a wrestler, are you?”

“I’m a lover, not a fighter,” Rodney said, eyes shifting, and John remembered the way Rodney had looked at him in the towel, and thought, _what the hell_ , and slid further into his lap and kissed him. Always a flirt, never serious, but Rodney was never not serious, and when Rodney looked at him like that it felt a lot different than when bored suburban soccer moms looked at him like that. 

And he wasn’t wrong. Rodney’s mouth was amazing, slack with astonishment but then quick enough on the uptake to become excitingly, tremblingly eager. John licked his way in lazily, finding slick-edged teeth and the ridges of the roof of his mouth, the taste of whiskey and geek, the texture of trash-talk and smartassery and occasional sweet vulnerability. 

John pulled him down and stretched their bodies out together along the couch, knocking the other game controller onto the floor, finding warm bare skin up the back of Rodney’s t-shirt, edging a thigh between Rodney’s. He hadn’t made out with someone on a couch in an incredibly long time. Hell, he hadn’t made out with anyone, period. Just the warm soft/firmness of another body, the excitement of another’s reactions, the scent of a body and the taste of a mouth; he hadn’t known he’d missed it so much. 

He shoved his hips up and moaned at the friction. That was a novelty, the answering wriggle and hitch, the hot hard pressure of another erection beside his. He grabbed Rodney’s hip, pulling their bodies together, rolling to get a little more on top of him so he could push down harder against him. 

“Jesus,” Rodney gasped, finally freeing his mouth long enough to speak, “Sheppard, I didn’t figure you were into this.” 

“I never thought about it before,” John said, and took his mouth again. He was drunk enough that it had taken him a little bit to get all the way hard, but by God, he was now. He ground down against Rodney, and pressed his thigh up, hard, shoving his hip against the hot pressure of Rodney’s similar condition. It felt good, it felt really good. “I figured you were into it, though.”

“I guess I’m not very subtle,” Rodney said, gasping in a really endearing manner that went straight to the base of John’s spine. 

“Good,” John said, shuddering a little and grinding down hard again. He was breathing too hard now to keep kissing Rodney, and put his face in his neck instead. Rodney’s hand slid up his shirt, pushing his shirt up, spanning his ribs— Rodney’s hands were big, hot, long fingers and broad palms.

John shoved up away from him a little bit and worked the buttons of his pants open. He was definitely doing this. Rodney sucked in his breath as John worked his hand down his fly, finding the placket of his boxer shorts, grabbing him through the thin cotton. Rodney was hot and hard and exclaimed deliciously as John fondled him. 

“Oh, holy shit,” Rodney said, and John laughed against his mouth and pulled his cock out through the flies of his boxers. Rodney was pretty big, and uncut, and John had never handled that— well, he’d never handled anybody’s that wasn’t his own. But he knew firsthand there wasn’t anything particularly complicated about it. He wrapped his hand around the shaft and pulled the foreskin back, and Rodney bucked up into his hand and made awesome noises that indicated that John certainly wasn’t doing anything wrong. 

“Yeah?” John breathed, delighted at the transparent excitement of Rodney’s response. He worked Rodney’s cock with his hand, watching as Rodney’s composure shredded entirely and he fell to pieces, gasping and moaning and shivering. It was every bit as rewarding as John had never really considered before, but was happy to now. 

“Oh,” Rodney said, “oh my— oh—“

John nuzzled Rodney’s chin up and bit his neck, shoving down against him and moving his hand faster. Rodney’s body was so solid, his breathing fast and his pulse hammering, the long muscles of his thighs quivering as he pressed up against John’s body. “Yeah,” John said into his neck, “aw, c’mon, Rodney, yeah, that’s good.”

“John,” Rodney said desperately, and he shuddered hard and came all over John’s hand with the hottest little gasping noise. 

“Yeah,” John said, satisfied, wiping his hand on his pyjama pants and kissing Rodney’s neck. 

“Holy shit,” Rodney said, panting; he was flushed bright red and trembling a little. John put his underwear back to rights and lay back down on top of him, kissing his neck and his chin and his face. He was so turned on, but he was really enjoying Rodney’s lack of composure. 

Rodney sought his mouth and kissed him for a long moment, and as he recovered he seemed to remember how to move his limbs. His hands came up, finding John’s shoulder, his waist, and finally Rodney shoved him over enough to slide out from under him. John made a protesting noise until Rodney dropped down onto his knees and pulled John’s cock out of his pants and put his mouth on it.

“Oh fuck,” John said, shoving himself up on his elbow. Rodney’s mouth was so hot and wet and slick, and Rodney sucked him in and looked up at him under long pale eyelashes, hollowing his cheeks to take John in as deep as he could. He pulled back, sucking on the head, tongue busy, and moved his hand along the shaft. It felt amazing, and John tipped his head back against the couch. “Holy Jesus, wow,” he said breathlessly. 

Rodney made a pleased little noise and took him in deep again, deeper still, he was trying to get John all the way into his throat, and that was really hot, and also wet and slick and tight. John groaned, letting himself put a hand in Rodney’s hair, petting his cheek, feeling his jaw working from the outside and the inside at the same time, and he had a nanosecond’s worth of freak out— _that’s a dude_ , he thought dazedly, _a guy, sucking my dick, I’m totally a homo,_ but it pretty immediately slid into _how the fuck did all those people know this before I did?_

And then he was close, so close, his whole body tingling, and he said, “Rodney, I’m— oh God I’m gonna— oh—“ 

Rodney looked up at him, smug and excited, but didn’t pull off. Instead he took John in deeper, hand moving, squeezing John’s balls just a little, and John made a choked-off noise (he didn’t have very hot sex noises, he knew) and came right down Rodney’s throat, hard and long until he thought he might pass out. 

“Rodney,” he said shakily, when he could breathe again, and Rodney pulled off, smug and satisfied, rearranging their clothes and patting John’s thigh.  John reached out and grabbed him, pulled him up into an embrace, curled himself around him and sat like that on the couch, letting his breathing come back to normal. 

Rodney found the glass of water by the cheese plate, and drank half of it. “That wasn’t nearly as gross as I’d been led to believe,” Rodney said. 

John still wasn’t anywhere near coherent speech, so he just shivered. In a moment he got up and towed Rodney into the bedroom, pulled him down into the bed, and curled back around him before sliding off into sleep. 


	3. Hold Your Horses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was writing a morning-after scene but it wasn't working. So we're moving along. This is going to be a long story, btw. So here, have some cute kid and exposition by dialogue instead of a long awkward scene.

 

John saw the car pull into the driveway and came down the stairs immediately to meet them. He went out onto the stoop and Joey was already struggling his way out of the car. Nancy got out of the car more slowly and laughed as Joey tore his way across the front yard, yelling, and nearly knocked John over. John picked him up and swung him around before pulling him in close and sitting down on the step to kiss his face over and over. 

“Daddy, Daddy,” Joey repeated, breathless now, “hi, Daddy, I missed you.”

“It’s been a long time,” John said, pulling him in close and wrapping himself around the warm little body. Joey wasn’t a baby anymore, wasn’t even a little boy; he was getting ganglier and more like a big kid every time John saw him, and he’d probably grown a good half-inch since the last time. “Oh my gosh, buddy, it’s been so long. I missed you, kid.”

Joey reached up and kissed John’s jaw with a wet smack, which made them both laugh. “I missed you a lot, Daddy,” he said. 

“Yeah,” John said. He petted Joey’s hair, which had been cut short again, shorter than John liked it. Oh well. It wasn’t his decision. He had no input in these things.

“Happy New Year,” Nancy said, coming more sedately up the walk with Joey’s duffel bag and his little backpack, and a big paper department store shopping bag in her other hand. John stood up, grunting as he hefted Joey against his hip, and leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. “We brought you some presents.”

“Come on up,” John said. “You wanna stay for a cup of coffee?”

“Sure,” Nancy said, smiling. She’d had a haircut too, and had some highlights put in. John didn’t like that either, she looked older and socialite-y, but again, it wasn’t anything his opinion mattered about. She frowned, looking at him. “Do you have a black eye?”

John touched his cheek. “Shouldn’t be,” he said. “I had one, before Christmas. Caught an elbow in a crowd. Should be gone by now.”

“There’s still a faint line of bruising,” Nancy said, and shook her head. “Your poor face.”

John laughed, and unlocked the door. He saw the curtains move, and paused, catching Rodney’s eye through the window. He gave him a dirty look. Rodney looked mortified and twitched the curtains shut. _Quit stalking me,_ John thought, annoyed, but didn’t have time to stay angry; Joey wriggled and laughed as they came into the foyer, and John kissed him on the head and put him down. The boy took off and ran up the stairs. 

“He’s getting really big,” John said a little wistfully, reaching over to take one of the bags from Nancy.

“I can’t really carry him anymore,” Nancy said. “Our bathroom scale says he’s over fifty pounds.”

“That’s normal, right?” John said. 

“He’s in the eighty-ninth percentile for height and the fifty-fifth percentile for weight,” Nancy said. 

John laughed. “So I figured,” he said. 

Joey had gone ahead into John’s apartment and came back now to the door. “Come on, come on,” he said, “come on!”

“We’re coming,” John said, reaching the stair landing and gesturing Nancy to precede him along the narrower hallway. “Hold your horses.”

“I don’t have any horses,” Joey said, then turned and galloped into the apartment again. Shrill noises echoed out the open door, and John traded amused looks with Nancy as he realized they were supposed to be neighs. “I’m holding my horses!” Joey yelled from the living room as John closed the apartment door behind himself. 

“Hold them a little more quietly,” John said, and then paused, staring blankly in dismay. 

“What?” Nancy asked, alarmed. 

“Jesus,” John said, “I just turned into my father for a split-second, did you hear that?” 

She laughed. “Oh my gosh,” she said, “I’m doing it all the time now. It’s so eerie.”

“Your dad was all right,” John said sincerely. He put the bag down on the kitchen chair and went to make a pot of coffee. “Mine, not so much.”

“He did send Joey a very nice card and me a check to buy him something nice,” Nancy said. 

John bit down his resentment; he was about to send his father an extra-large check to pay down as big a chunk of the mortgage as possible. All the overtime he’d worked in December was going into that check, but even with that, it was still going to be another two or three years until he could finish paying it off. “I’m sure it was nice,” he said neutrally. 

“Your Christmas sounded nice,” Nancy said. A conversation with that much 'nice' in it, John reflected, wasn't going anywhere fast. Joey came back into the room and wrapped himself around John’s thigh. John put his hand in Joey’s hair. 

“It was fun,” John said, “but then we got into a really stupid argument and it turns out Rodney’s kind of a jerk after all, so we don’t hang out now. Kind of a bummer.”

“Oh dear,” Nancy said, giving him an odd look, and John grimaced; it was pretty much exactly what she was thinking, and that was the craziest part. But he wasn’t going to get into it with Joey right there. He could talk about that kind of shit with Nancy, or come as close as he ever did to talking about that kind of shit, which mostly consisted of him not saying much and her filling the gaps with unnervingly accurate conclusions. He could not talk about anything remotely resembling a sex life with his young son. 

“Hey,” John said, “do you want a cup of milk and some cookies?” 

“Yeah,” Joey said, beaming up at him. He was getting better at coming down off being hyperactive whenever he got excited; he was still vibrating slightly with excitement, but he was managing to hold still long enough to cling to John. 

“Okay then,” John said. “When the coffee’s done, okay?” 

“Okay,” Joey said. He buried his face against John’s leg and hung on. 

“That’s my good boy,” John said. He hit the button on the coffee maker and picked Joey up, sitting down in the chair with Joey curled up in his lap. He kissed the boy on the head, and Joey settled against his chest with a sigh. John rested his cheek against Joey’s head. A lot of the cold, empty, twisted-up misery of the last couple of weeks eased a lot just from the warm, slightly wiggly and sharp-edged pressure of small boy in his arms, and he closed his eyes and let himself enjoy it for just a moment. 

“Four days,” Joey said, “that’s how long I’m staying this time, right?”

“Yup,” John said. “Four days.” It wasn’t really very long, but it was longer than John had had off in a single stretch in months. 

“What are we gonna do?” Joey asked, twitching restlessly but not pulling away at all. 

“All kinds of things,” John said. Not sleep a whole lot, probably, but he was used to that. He kissed Joey’s head again, smelling his hair and the warmth of his skin. “But I’m not gonna let go of you yet, okay? I need to suck all your youth and warmth out for another few minutes because I’m so very, very old and crotchety.”

Joey giggled. “Crotchety,” he said. “Is that a swear?”

“No,” John said. “It isn’t. I promise.”

“You know the best words that aren’t swears,” Joey said happily, burrowing deeper into John’s chest and digging his shoe rather painfully into John’s leg. John didn’t flinch, though; he wasn’t going to push Joey away for so much as a second, not even to spare himself bruises. 

Nancy was watching them, and looked sad. “How was everybody?” John asked her. 

“You heard most of it,” she said. “Oh my gosh, there was such a hullabaloo with Clarice.”

“She called you a man-slut,” Joey said, giggling.

“I know,” John said darkly. He was a little sick of that kind of thing.

“She ended up in a screaming match with our mother,” Nancy said, “which was just gloriously ducky, and she tried to storm out but Tom wouldn’t let her have the keys because she was drunk, and it was a rare disaster and she wound up locking herself in a bathroom for like three hours, and finally he pretty much carried her out and brought her home, and left the kids with us overnight and came back for them the next day. The kids, fortunately, thought it was a fun sleepover— which it was— but I sort of don’t know what’s going to happen, there.”

“That’s a shame,” John said. 

“So, don’t worry, she’s in no position to be judging you in any way,” Nancy said. 

“She wasn’t in the first place,” John said, frowning. 

“Of course not,” Nancy said hastily, wide-eyed. “No, of course not. I just meant, she’s the one who looks ridiculous.”

“We had a really good time, though,” Joey said. “I had to share a bed with Tommy and Jenna had to sleep with Mommy.”

“She kicks,” Nancy said. “We didn’t have enough beds.”

“That sounds kind of exciting, though,” John said. “Did you stay up way too late?”

“Yes,” Nancy said wearily. She shook her head. “But we played a lot of games, so it was fun.”

“Yeah,” Joey agreed enthusiastically.

“I bet,” John said. 

Joey wriggled. “I gotta pee, Dad,” he said. 

John let go, and he scampered off to the bathroom. “So tell me more about your neighbor,” Nancy said immediately. 

John sighed. What the hell, he wasn’t telling anybody else the story, he might as well tell her. “It’s a long story,” he said, “longer than a little boy bathroom break, but I’ll try to sum up. Guy downstairs is pretty entertaining. Nerdy, geeky, gay. We get along.” 

“Oh my God,” Nancy said. “I knew it!”

“I didn’t even tell you yet,” John said, pulling the carafe out of the coffeemaker. She’d always insisted she thought he was bi, though, when they were together, and John had felt it was moot, since he was also monogamous. But it was one of Nancy’s pet topics when she was drunk and horny. Had been, anyway. What she did now when she was drunk and horny was, like her hair, none of his goddamn business.

“Did you get drunk and make out?” she asked eagerly. 

John rolled his eyes. “Yes,” he said, “we got drunk and made out.”

“Then what happened?” she demanded, and craned her neck cartoonishly to see that the bathroom door was still shut.

“He called me a whore and I threw him out,” John said. “So that was a fucking disaster and I won’t be trying _that_ again.”

The door opening heralded Joey’s return, and John chewed on his lips, hoping Joey hadn’t heard that f-bomb. “Oh, John,” Nancy said, sympathetic. Joey ran in and wrapped himself around John’s leg again. 

“Did you wash your hands, buddy?” John asked. “Oh, never mind, I can tell you did because you’re drying them on my pants. Charming. Thanks, buddy.”

Joey giggled up at him, and John ruffled his hair with one hand before turning back to pour the coffee with the other. “I used _soap_ , Daddy,” he said. 

“Good,” John said. He got a little juice glass down from the cabinet and moved to the fridge, lifting Joey off the ground with his leg held stiff as the boy giggled and wrapped himself tightly around it. He got the milk out, added some to the coffee, and poured the little glass full of it, then pulled down a plate and took cookies out of the tin to put onto it. “Here, take your cup over to the table.”

Joey pried himself loose from John’s leg and took the cup obediently. John brought the plate and one of the coffee cups to Nancy, then went back and grabbed his own. “Sugar bowl’s on the table,” he said. 

“Thanks,” Nancy said, adding some to her coffee. “Where’d you get these?”

“Rachel,” John said, his favorite coworker and sometimes partner. She had a son Joey’s age and a daughter a little older, and she was on her own with them, with a little help from her mom. She and the kids spent a lot of time with John when he had Joey. They were pretty good friends. “She brought a bunch in for everybody, but she sent these home with me for when Joey came over.”

“That was nice,” Nancy said. 

“Can I have the big one?” Joey asked, surveying the plate of cookies excitedly. John sat down.

“Sure,” John said. Joey grabbed it, a big frosted snowman with chocolate chips down his front like buttons, and came happily to sit on John’s lap again.  “She’s always nice to me,” John said to Nancy, wrapping his arms around Joey. It felt so good to hold him, like there was an empty place in his middle that was getting filled up.

“I always think you should date her,” Nancy said. 

“Yeah,” John said, “she doesn’t, and her opinion on that is kinda important, so… she has a girlfriend now anyway, sort of, I think.”

“Oh,” Nancy said, startled.

“I know,” John said. “Maybe it’s something in the water.”

Joey nestled back against John’s chest, warm and trusting and happy. John tightened his arms around him. “Well,” Nancy said, “not in _my_ water.”

“O _ho_ ,” John said. “You got any prospects?”

She shrugged. “Nothing serious,” she said. 

“That’s a yes, though,” John said, amused and a little teasing. He was sort of over being jealous, but not really. He picked up one of the smaller cookies, an angel entirely frosted with yellow frosting, and bit it in half. 

Nancy shrugged again, making a faux-innocent face. “Kinda hard to do much of anything when I’m so busy,” she said, rolling her eyes toward Joey, who was absorbed happily in his cookie. 

“Well,” John said. “You’ve got four days, now.”

“I know,” she said. “I might have some plans. With a particular someone. Maybe.” She picked up a medium-sized cookie, star-shaped, frosted pale blue, and bit one of the points off.

“All of your mom’s plans are going to be way more boring than ours,” John said to Joey.

“Yeah,” Joey said fiercely, obviously not really following the discussion but excited anyway. 

“If I get a lot more boring plans with this someone, maybe you guys will want to make some more plans?” Nancy said. 

John blinked at her. “What kind of more plans?” he asked warily.

“Just,” she said, “maybe more than one weekend a month?”

John considered that. He’d have to give up some overtime. God, though, if she got serious with a guy and wanted to move in with him, the situation with their house was bound to come to light, and it was going to be a disaster if he didn’t have the mortgage paid down. Working long shifts three weekends a month was kind of important when it came to the repayment schedule. “I gotta think about that,” John said. “Do some math. It’s hard to get weekends off, y’know? And I can’t take him during the week, because he can’t miss school.”

“Don’t wanna go to school,” Joey said, twisting to look up at him worriedly. “Wanna see _you_ , Daddy.”

John bent and kissed his forehead. “That’s my boy,” he said. “But don’t worry, that’s not a choice you have to make.” 

Nancy shrugged. “We’ll talk,” she said. 

“Of course we will,” John said. 


	4. Thirty-Eight Special

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John has a bit of a professional setback. Nancy is somewhat unsympathetic.

 

On his way off-shift at 4am John stopped by the convenience store closest to the station to grab a newspaper. He didn’t subscribe to one, and rarely read them, but he had Joey this weekend and they were gonna try building model planes. He’d done plenty of that sort of thing as a kid and knew that it was really important to put something down so you didn’t wreck your table with glue. His mother had used an old tablecloth for their model-building sessions. He didn’t even own a new tablecloth, let alone an old one, so that was out. He didn’t have an old dropcloth in the garage, either, since he didn’t have a garage, and in fact he generally didn’t hang onto possessions much so he didn’t even have any worn-out clothes that would serve the purpose, so a newspaper was required. 

He was bent down looking at the lowest rack—  maybe he should just buy the New York Times and be done with it, though if you were going to do that, a Sunday one was best— when another person came through the door, bell tinkling, and said something to the bored middle-aged Indian man behind the register, who made a terrified noise. 

That got John’s attention. He leaned sideways to peer out down the aisle. A big guy in a hoodie with his hand holding something large in the pocket was leaning over the counter, and the terrified clerk had his hands up and out, shaking. 

Fuck.

John slid his cellphone out of his pocket and sent a text to Rachel, who he knew was just coming on shift and, as a single mom, never had her phone out of reach. ROBBERY IN PRGS AT WILLYS ON CORNER he typed laboriously, cursing his slow thumbs. He heard the register open, and sent the message. _Stay calm_ , he mentally urged the cashier. _Just give him the money. Don’t try anything_. He peered down the aisle again, trying to get identifying details on the guy. Six foot one or two, indeterminate race— likely white or Hispanic— Vans shoes and a Sabres hoodie— no discernable accent, probably local. Sounded young, despite his size; there was something sort of unfinished or soft about his jawline that suggested youth even at this distance. A kid. Great.

John carried his sidearm most of the time. A lot of cops did, and he found it easier just not to get out of the habit he’d acquired in long deployments. He’d never shot anybody while off-duty, and wanted to keep it that way, so he left it in the holster at the small of his back. You don’t draw it if you aren’t prepared to fire it, and he wasn’t sure this kid really had a gun and really didn’t want to find out if he didn’t have to.

The cashier knew he was there, he’d spoken to him on his way in. John made eye contact with him by accident, and ducked back behind the aisle, cursing silently. The last thing he needed was for the kid to know he was there. His phone vibrated and he saw it was Rachel answering with a string of question marks. He pulled her name up and put his thumb over the dial button. 

“Yo,” the kid said, his voice young, “I know you’re there. Come out.” Shit. The cashier had blown his cover.

John hit the send button and carefully put the phone down. “Hey,” he said, “I don’t want to startle you, I was just gettin’ a newspaper.” He stood up slowly, hands-first. “I’m comin’ out, nobody panic.” He heard the phone connect as he stepped out past the end of the aisle. “I got my hands up. Nobody get crazy.”

The kid had the gun out of his pocket now, and John grimaced; it was a perfectly reasonable-looking .38 revolver, old-fashioned, visibly loaded, and producing it had just kicked this up to a much more serious crime category— not very cagey, this one. “Is there anybody else back there?” the kid demanded. He was really young, John thought, stomach twisting a little; a big husky kid, but a kid nonetheless, maybe not even out of high school. He looked white; if his family was good he might get tried as a juvenile.

“No,” John said evenly. “I’m here by myself. Just gettin’ off my shift. I just wanna go home to my kid. Don’t do anything nuts. We’re okay here.”

“There’s somebody else back there,” the kid insisted. 

“No,” John said, stepping further out, “there’s no one else here.”

The cashier was emptying the drawer into a plastic shopping bag. Amateur; most of the cash in a store like this at this hour would be rolled change, which would probably tear the cheap plastic bag if the kid had to run. Which he would; they were barely a block from the police station. There was no way he was driving out of here.

“Gimme your wallet,” the kid said. 

“You don’t want to do that,” John said wearily. Fuck, he really didn’t need this shit. There wasn’t much cash in his wallet, but he had shit in there he really couldn’t replace, pictures and letters and things it was dumb to keep in a wallet but John did anyway. The kid’s grip on the gun changed a little bit and John said, “Whoa, whoa, stay cool.”

“Put it on the floor and kick it over here,” the kid said. 

John nodded wearily. The wallet was in his back pocket, right near his concealed carry holster. He could get either one out. But even as he sized the kid up (inexpert grip, shaking a little, but the gun was cocked and the safety off and the kid’s finger was on the trigger because he’d only ever watched movies and didn’t know any better) he knew he wasn’t going to pull the gun, because then he’d have to kill this boy. You never shot anybody you weren’t okay with killing, and John was really, really not on board with killing anybody today.

He pulled his wallet out. “You got it,” he said. “You just stay calm, there, friend.” He set the wallet on the floor, kicked it over toward the kid. It bounced off the counter and went slightly under one of the racks.

“Shit,” the kid said. “You did that on purpose.”

“Believe me,” John said honestly, “I don’t really want to drag this out. You want me to come over there and get it?”

“No,” the kid said, “stay where you are and keep your hands where I can see them.” Christ, how many cop shows had the kid watched?

Behind him the cashier had pressed the button under the counter, and was looking calculatingly at the kid like he was going to try something. The cashier knew John, knew he was a cop; they came over here all the time to get coffee. He probably knew John was armed. But this was not the time to force a confrontation; John would rather the kid got away and let his guard down before he got arrested, if it came to that or getting shot trying to stop him. There was less than a hundred bucks in the register, and it just plain wasn’t worth the risk to try to stop this.

“It’s cool,” John said, partly to the cashier, “we’re all going to stay where we are and not do anything.” _Jesus, you’re going to get us killed,_ he thought at the cashier. 

The kid stepped away from the cashier and bent to get the wallet under the rack, just as a police cruiser pulled up right to the door and hit the lights. “Nobody move,” Bates yelled over the loudspeaker. The kid jerked up, gesturing wildly, and pulled the trigger. 

The force of the impact spun John sideways right off his feet into the glass-fronted coolers. He hit the floor and curled up, numb and shocked, the breath forced out of him. Fuck, he was shot, that was blood on his hands, somewhere in the gut, not good, not happy. 

The kid slid across the floor and fetched up next to him on his knees, and there was a click, a hammer-thumbing-back kind of click. John looked up slowly, blinking as he took in the changed scene. “Don’t come any closer,” the kid yelled. “Don’t come any closer or he gets it in the face this time.”

“Fuck,” John said, voice thready, “don’t do this.” 

The kid had his teeth gritted, and hauled John up by the back of the collar, even stronger than he looked. He shoved John against the cooler door and jammed the gun barrel right up under John’s cheekbone and screamed, “I said don’t come any closer!”

_Bates, you hair-trigger prick, you don’t make a fuss until you’re through the door_ , John thought hazily. He managed to get one arm under himself so he wasn’t dangling by the grip on his collar, and wrapped the other arm around his midsection, feeling the hot slickness of a whole lot of blood and the white-edged wave of shock coming up to hit him. 

“Kid, you’re makin’ a big mistake,” John managed. It was hard to talk. “You put the gun down now, you can tell ‘em it went off by accident— I know it did— and you might get off easy. They’re not gonna let you drag me outta here. You’re killin’ us both right now. Don’t do it.”

“Shut up,” the kid yelled. 

John closed his eyes a moment, collecting himself, then dared the quarter turn of his head necessary to look over toward the door. Bates was there, and Rachel, and about six other guys, all in and around the doorway. Bates looked really angry but he wasn’t moving. John grimaced at him. “Drop the weapon,” Bates said resolutely. 

“Back up!” the kid yelled. “Get back to the door or I’ll kill him!”

“You do that,” John said, “you’re outta bargaining chips and fulla bullets.”

The kid didn’t flinch. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll blow off one foot at a time. I got five more bullets. That’s enough for both hands, both feet, and your head.”

“It does _not_ have to go down like this,” John said. He was starting to regret not shooting the kid when he had the chance. And the pool of his blood on the floor was starting to spread. “Also, I don’t have that long.”

“You’ve got five seconds to get out that door,” the kid yelled, “before I start blowing body parts off this guy.”

John gave Bates a look, but Bates was watching the kid, and whatever he saw there he didn’t like. He lowered his gun and backed away. “It’s not gonna work,” John said desperately. “It’s just gonna be a standoff til they bring in the snipers or I bleed to death. Don’t do this.”

The kid scrambled to his feet, hauling at John. “Get up,” he shouted.

“Fuck,” John said, breath squeaking as he struggled, “you’re fuckin’ crazy.” His legs wouldn’t hold him but the kid had him in a headlock and more or less dragged him. He sort of got his feet under himself before the pain riptide spun him under. If the kid twisted him any farther he was gonna feel the gun in John’s waistband, and then instead of a .38 special revolver with five bullets he was gonna have a Colt .45 hi-cap semiautomatic with 14 bullets, and a bunch more people were probably gonna die.

“Stay back,” the kid was shouting, struggling with John’s half-limp flailing. The cold air hit him with a shock and he realized that they were outside now, he’d missed a little bit of the proceedings— he hadn’t blacked out, he knew, he was just not really tracking all that well.

“You are just a fountain of terrible ideas,” John muttered, realizing the kid was headed for a car, and John’s useless fucking coworkers were all standing back in a horrified semicircle. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he added, a little louder, for Bates’s benefit. He got in that car, he was definitely on track to bleed to death before his idiot coworkers fixed their initial mistake.

Oh Jesus, there was a guy with a camera. Why the fuck wasn’t there a perimeter? _Fucking civilians_. “Shut up,” the kid said to him, dragging him across the parking lot. John eyed the distance, eyed the terrain, and kept himself stumbling along. Not like he could’ve walked, but, y’know. _Fuck_ , it hurt. 

They reached the passenger side and the kid kept his arm looped around John’s neck and shoulder, and used his gun hand to open the door, because he was an—  

“Idiot _fucking_ amateur,” John said, dropping to his knees, twisting out of the kid’s grasp, and coming up with his .45 pressed right against the base of the boy’s skull. “Drop the fucking gun.” The kid froze, and John shouted, “I said _drop it_.”

The revolver clattered to the pavement. “Bates,” John yelled, “get over here and do your fucking job.”

He stepped back as the closest policeman— Yager, as it happened— grabbed the kid and threw him down across the hood of the car to handcuff him. When John was satisfied they weren’t going to fuck it up, he uncocked his gun, flipped the safety back on, and stuck it back into his concealed carry holster. Then he staggered a couple of steps and fell over into a snowbank. 

Rachel appeared in his upward-facing field of view, and said, “Oh my God.”

“I got fuckin’ shot by a fuckin’ amateur,” John said. Everything was kind of tinny. “Hey,” he said to Rachel, realizing there were ambulance sirens, “my phone and my wallet— they’re in there on the floor— can you grab ‘em before someone else does?”

“I’ll make sure you get ‘em,” Rachel said, but instead of going and doing it she knelt next to him and took his hand. 

“I’m not, fuckin’, Eponine over here,” John said. “I’m not gonna die in your arms. It’s a goddamn flesh wound. Once they clamp the blood vessels I’ll be fuckin’ fine.” 

Rachel stared at him. “Did you just reference _Les Miserables_ ,” she said blankly, her French of course flawless. She’d wanted to be a medievalist, but academia wasn’t compatible with single motherhood and actually putting meals on the table too, so she was a cop instead. She and John got along pretty well, really. But they had a mutual pact that they didn’t speak French or Latin in front of their coworkers. It was too weird. 

“Or whatever,” John said. She hadn’t let go of his hand. “Marius,” he whispered dramatically, “ _je t’aime pour tojours_.”

“You ass,” she said.

“Go get my damn wallet,” he said. 

 

 

 

Nancy frowned at her phone as she picked it up. John’s number. Why was he calling her on a Thursday morning? There was really only one reason he would be calling her on a Thursday morning, and cold fury made her voice crack as she picked up. “What’s the excuse this time, John?”

She had plans this weekend. Plans with Grant, the guy she was thinking about getting serious with. Plans that did not involve Joey. Plans she’d already had to reschedule three times. She was starting to think maybe that’s what was going on here, that somehow John knew about them. But it just wasn’t like John… or was it? 

His sigh sounded a bit like static. The reception was pretty bad, he might not even have sighed at all. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I got—“

“This is two in a row,” Nancy said. “And one last month. The whole point of this was that you were going to start seeing him more often and I think you’ve actually been seeing him _less_.”

The thing with dating, as a mom, was that either guys didn’t want too much to do with your kid, or tried way too hard to woo the kid. The latter was preferable, but a bit awkward; kids weren’t stupid, and Joey might not totally understand what was going on, but he knew Grant was acting funny and was suspicious. It was part of the reason Nancy had been trying to get Joey more time with John— partly to give Grant more time to not be trying too hard with Joey, and partly because she hated the way John went dead behind the eyes every time she took Joey away.

“I know,” he said heavily, hoarse. He sounded tired, guilty, worn-down. 

“He’s not some _obligation_ ,” Nancy hissed, suddenly furious. “He’s not, like, having to go to church or kiss your aunt or something, he’s your goddamn _son_ , John Sheppard, and every time I have to make another excuse for you it breaks his little goddamn heart.”

John was just being such a piece of shit about the extra weekends. She understood that his work situation was complicated, understood that he had a lot of ground to make up what with switching careers so abruptly, but he worked so many hours of overtime. She’d understood, before— if she’d lost everything like he had (and she just couldn’t make herself think of it any other way, and couldn’t not blame herself), she’d probably work as many hours as humanly possible too. But now he didn’t seem to be able to back off on it, not even to do what he seemed to want most in the world, which was spending more time with Joey. 

It wasn’t like he needed the money. She’d seen his apartment. It wasn’t a shithole, but it was pretty damn small. And his car was ten years old and barely safe. It gave her the willies every time he drove anywhere with Joey in it. He had almost no hobbies, none that were all that expensive. And she knew he had a big old chunk of hazard duty pay saved up; she’d insisted he keep it in the divorce, even though he’d made her take the whole contents of their joint checking account. The child support he paid was trifling compared to his salary, especially given how few expenses he had. And she kept tabs— he wasn’t drinking, it wasn’t drugs, it wasn’t gambling. She had her methods, and she’d find out about any of those.

“After this one, I’ll have the next several weekends in a row off,” John said. “Weeks, too.”

Nancy paused in shock. “Did you get fired?” she asked. 

“No,” John answered, sounding stung. 

“What the heck is going on?” Nancy asked. 

John was the jealous type, Nancy knew that. She’d kind of liked it, while they were together, had enjoyed the way he stared people down, the way he got possessive in bed. Even now, angry as she was, the memory of his teeth on the back of her neck made her shiver. And he had always been good about it, and smart— he’d never made it her problem, never tried to control her, never demanded she do anything. It had kind of been a game, and she’d loved teasing him, but he’d always responded well to it. She just couldn’t see him sabotaging her. She could see him doing it in person, maybe, a little bit— standing too close, staring too long, talking about guns, that sort of thing— but she really couldn’t see him being underhanded like this, screwing around with his precious Joey time just to fuck things up with her new boyfriend. It just wasn’t… it wasn’t _like_ him. She couldn’t believe that could be it. 

There was a faint beeping. “Shit,” John said, “I gotta go. Look, I’ll call you back in a bit.”

“Tell me something,” Nancy said. “Just something I can tell him. Don’t make me scramble for an excuse.”

“I got a—” John said, or something, it cut off. The line went dead abruptly. 

Nancy stared at her phone for a long moment. “God fucking damn it,” she said. He’d said _I gotta go_ and hung up on her, hadn’t he. That fucker.


	5. Unifying Factor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rodney's Google search history gets really weird.

 

Rodney had fucked things up before. In fact, that was the single unifying factor of every single one of his relationships— romantic, familial, even professional. He’d fucked plenty of them up in less time than he’d managed with this one. He’d made far more spectacular errors. Obviously the only reason this one was affecting him so much worse than the others was that it was the most recent. But _wow_ , was it affecting him. 

He couldn’t stop Hot Neighbor Watch. In fact, it weighed even more obsessively on his mind than it had before. He knew what Hot Neighbor looked like with his clothes off (slightly fuzzy, golden-skinned, long, lean), he knew how Hot Neighbor’s hands felt on him (firm, confident, clever), he even knew what Hot Neighbor’s (thick, hot, perfect) cock _tasted_ like, for God’s sake, it was impossible not to think about it. He couldn’t stop staring and was only making it worse for himself by trying not to— he kept drawing the curtains so he wouldn’t look, then wouldn’t be able to keep from peering through them whenever he saw John go by, which meant that John saw the curtains move and knew what Rodney was doing, and gave him (hot, brooding) narrow-eyed looks. 

It had been such a little slip, too. Rodney hadn’t really meant for it to sound like it had, though now that he thought back on it, there wasn’t really any other way John could have taken it. “You do this a lot, right,” hadn’t been a question, and trying to excavate himself out with “you don’t usually bring them home” and “you know, you must go back to their places all the time” and, worst, “or you don’t usually stay the night?”  That had been a pretty bad error in judgement. And apparently John was touchy about his reputation. The fact that his ex-wife’s sister thought him a man-slut, enough to say so to his small child, was probably part of the reason. And the cherry on top was, of course, what a crazy stalker it made Rodney sound like. 

Rodney had tried approaching him on another occasion to point out that he merely meant to compliment John’s undeniable attractiveness and would never engage in slut-shaming and in fact had nothing but admiration for the type of person who could command that kind of attention, which had very, very nearly gotten him punched. So they hadn’t spoken since then. And he kind of made a point of not being around whenever he knew John would be.

He had devoted quite a bit of his intellect to trying to find a way to reconcile, even as friends, because Christmas had been more fun than Rodney had had in literally years, even when you discounted the making out / getting off part. But his considerable intellect wasn’t very… applicable to this sort of thing. He’d snuck out one day, knowing John was asleep, and had repaired his car’s misbehaving fan belt and given him a tune-up while he was at it, but that was hardly going to help things; he couldn’t exactly take credit for it without revealing that he was being a creepy fucker. (Even someone as bad with people as Rodney knew that there were lines and that sort of thing was kind of… over it.) So he repaired the furnace and cut everyone’s heating bills by about 30%, and made sure there was never ice on the steps, and stayed the hell out of John’s way. 

He’d successfully managed not to so much as look at John for about a week, though it had been made much easier by John not coming home for four days, when he stepped out of his apartment door and startled violently. John was sitting on the bottom of the stairs up to the second floor, hunched over with his head in his hands. 

“Jesus,” Rodney said, too flustered to remember not to speak to him, “you startled me.” 

John didn’t react at all, and Rodney peered suspiciously at him. He was wearing battered jeans and an old parka, and wasn’t moving at all. “Um,” Rodney said awkwardly, the more so since he hadn’t spoken to the guy in (he did the math) two months and four days (three days after the incident), “uh, John? Are you all right?”

John didn’t react. He was leaning against the bannister’s lowest post, clutching a plastic bag with some things in it, one leg bent and the other sprawled out like he couldn’t feel it. Was he— was he drunk? Rodney hadn’t ever seen him drunk outside of his apartment. And even then, just the one time. 

He wasn’t unconscious— he was moving slightly, sort of exaggeratedly breathing like something was wrong, and Rodney came a little closer, wondering— was he crying or something? 

“What’s wrong?” Rodney tried again. John was obviously not okay; nobody sat on stairs covering their face if they were okay, especially not somebody like John. 

John’s shoulders jerked a little and he lowered his hand, blinking up at Rodney with glassy eyes. He looked— he looked awful, white as a sheet, hair uncharacteristically flat, face stubbled way beyond the usual rakish skipped-shaving-this-morning level (or maybe I’m-just-so-incredibly-manly-it-grows-this-fast-instantly, Rodney wasn’t sure— it wasn’t something that happened to him, he just looked like a bum if he missed shaving twice). There were dark circles under his eyes and sweat running down the side of his face, and he looked like he didn’t know where he was. 

“Hey,” John said vaguely, eyes not quite pointing at Rodney. 

“John,” Rodney said, shocked, “you look fucking awful, what’s wrong?”

“Got shot,” John said, collecting himself enough to quirk an eyebrow.

“What?” Rodney yelped, stepping back a pace. But he didn’t see any blood. Why would John get shot and stagger home to sit on the stairs? Why wouldn’t he go to a hospital or something. “What, just now?”

“No,” John said, as if that were obvious. “Couple days ago. Just got outta th’hospital. Can’t get up th’stairs.”

Rodney looked at the long, steep stairwell. These old Victorians were beautiful, but drafty, and the high ceilings meant crazy long staircases. The third floor apartment had been available and Rodney had turned it right down. No thanks. First floor all the way. There was enough of a hike to get up the stairs on the stoop as it was. And that hike could probably explain how a guy who ran pretty much every other morning looked like this at the foot of a staircase. 

“Did you get shot in the leg?” Rodney asked, not sure where to start in solving this problem.

“No,” John said. He was breathing hard, but shallowly. Rodney looked him over. No obvious bandages, so… somewhere under his clothes. Not an arm, neither was bandaged or immobilized, and he was holding a plastic bag with both hands, though it didn’t look like he had any clear notion it was there. He really looked on the verge of unconsciousness. Rodney sat down next to him on the wide step, worried he’d pitch forward onto the floor at any moment.

“And, what,” Rodney said, “they just… had you walk home from the hospital? Drive yourself?” Horrifying thought— how could he have driven like this?

“Taxi,” John said. 

“How long have you been sitting here?” Rodney asked, horrified. It could have been hours. Nobody lived in that third floor apartment. And the rear apartments’ inhabitants all worked regular hours and had either long since departed for, or long since returned from, their jobs. 

John waved a hand. “Like, a minute,” he said. He pushed his hair back, and it stuck up crazily for a second before slowly wilting back down. This was highly alarming to Rodney, who had seen John in many, many moods and configurations (including, gloriously, post-coitus, once), but never, never, never with _flat hair_. 

John turned his eyes up to Rodney’s face, biting at his lip in a manner that was almost alarmingly appealing. “Can I ask you a favor?”

Rodney blinked at him, and thought, _I would not have to be drunk in the slightest to suck your dick again_ , but for once, his brain had enough control of his mouth that he did not say anything beyond, “Sure.”

“Help me up the stairs?” John asked, looking almost sheepish. 

“And what will you do once you’re there?” Rodney asked. His mind was filled with visions of this poor man in his weakened state falling down and not being able to get up and dying tragically because the American medical system was, well, honestly, probably no worse than the Canadian system in this respect. 

John gave him a much less adorable look, a bit sidelong like he was perhaps insane. “Sit on my couch?” he said. “Lie in my bed?” 

“You’ll have to pick one,” Rodney said, “because from the look of you, you won’t be moving from one to the other.”

“Yup,” John said, totally unfazed. “It’s okay.”

“What if you fall?” Rodney asked. “What if you can’t get off the couch? What if you starve to death?”

“My friend’s coming by to check on me,” John said, resigned now. “I just gotta get up there.”

“If you say so,” Rodney said. “Okay, I’m not— I don’t really know anything about this kind of thing. Where is it okay to hang onto you?”

“Anywhere but the middle of me,” John said. “Here, take my arm over your shoulder.”

“Okay,” Rodney said, hesitant and nervous, but he took John’s proffered hand and hauled him up. John bit both of his lips, squinting his eyes tightly, but made no sound as he got to his feet, leaning heavily on Rodney’s shoulders. “I don’t want to hurt you worse than you al— oh my God, is that blood?”

John glanced down at the brownish stain peeking through the space between the buttons on his shirt. “No,” he said, “it’s disinfectant.”

“Oh,” Rodney said, still squeamish. Shot, with a gun, was pretty far outside Rodney’s experience. “Um, what now?”

“Up th’ stairs,” John said. 

They moved awkwardly, jerkily, one painful step at a time; John’s knuckles were white on the bannister and the unsteadiness of his knees made him wobble alarmingly against Rodney. They made it four or five steps, and Rodney said, “Are you okay?”

“Of course not,” John managed, strangled and hoarse. “I got shot, Rodney.”

“I mean relatively,” Rodney said. “I mean, right now, like, are you bleeding or anything, or are you going to pass out, because if you pass out, I mean, I’m not that kind of doctor, so I don’t think there’s anything I can do for you except maybe to call an ambulance and then they’ll just take you right back to the hospital and oh my God, why would they send you home if you’re just going to have to go straight back?”

“Rodney,” John put in, teeth gritted, “I’m _fine_ , chill out.”

“What?” Rodney blinked at him. He looked fucking awful, but he also looked annoyed, which at least meant he was alive and that had to be something.

“I’m conscious,” John said. “Let’s keep moving. I would really like to sit down.”

“Right,” Rodney said. “Right. Okay.” 

They made it up the stairs the rest of the way, Rodney mentally cursing the nice high ceilings he liked the rest of the time. It made the stairway that much longer. They limped down the long upper hallway, got to the door of John’s apartment, and he dropped his keys.

“Fuck,” John said wearily. There was a long moment, then he went on, a little quieter, “Think you could grab those?”

“Oh,” Rodney said, “ah, sure,” and then there was an awkward dance of disentangling himself from John, propping John on the wall, retrieving the keys, presenting them to John. 

John immediately dropped them again, fingers basically nerveless. “God damn it,” he said, and closed his eyes, resting his head against the wall. “Rodney, it’s the brass key. It should look just like yours.”

“Right,” Rodney said, “right,” and retrieved them. He fumbled for a moment, then unlocked the apartment door. It looked exactly as he remembered in there, spotless and perfect. 

John opened his eyes and pushed himself away from the wall, and his legs gave out immediately. He caught himself on the doorframe and Rodney grabbed him carefully, helping him into the hallway, past the bathroom, into the kitchen. Rodney set him down in one of the kitchen chairs. 

“Can you grab me a glass of water?” John asked, painfully fumbling the plastic bag onto the table. “Glasses… in th’ cupboard left of sink.”

“Sure,” Rodney said. John sat, eyes closed, while he got the glass down and put water into it. The apartment was immaculate except for some clean dishes in the dish drainer. It was sort of unreal, and exactly as Rodney remembered it from the one other time he’d been here. Apparently that hadn’t only been because Sheppard cleaned for company.

He put the glass of water onto the table, and John opened his eyes and rummaged through the plastic bag. He pulled out a prescription bottle, got the cap off, and fished around until he managed to extract a pill. Rodney watched him swallow it with some of the water. 

“Hey,” John said in a moment, peeling his eyes open again. “Can I ask you one more big favor?”

“Like what?” Rodney asked uneasily. 

“Around six or so a colleague’s coming by to check on me,” John said. “If I get your phone number and call you when she’s here, can you let her into the building for me?”

This was what it took to get John’s number. Rodney stared at him stupidly for a moment. “Oh,” he said. “Of course.” He pulled out his phone. “What’s your number? I can just call you, and then my number will be in your phone.” 

“My phone’s dead,” John admitted. He fumbled it out of his jeans pocket and set it on the table. He pulled his wallet out, then, and pulled something out of it. A card. A business card. “Here,” he said, “this is my number. Give me like, ten minutes to get the phone plugged in, and then call, and I can put you right in the address book so I don’t lose you.”

“Where’s the plug?” Rodney asked skeptically. John wasn’t going anywhere in the next ten minutes, and he didn’t see a phone charger anywhere around here. 

“Bedroom,” John said. “It’s cool, I got it.”

“Pretty sure you don’t,” Rodney said, and picked up John’s phone and carried it into the bedroom. 

The bed had hospital corners. The sheets were turned down. It looked like a hotel. Rodney blinked for a long moment, trying unsuccessfully not to remember what it had felt like to have John’s (lithe, hairy, taut) body against his, in this very bed. He plugged the phone into the charging cable on the night stand, fiddled with it until he was sure it was charging, then came back into the kitchen.

John was kind of sagging against the table, his skin a truly unnerving shade of gray. “Oh God,” Rodney said. “Um, don’t pass out.”

“M’fine,” John said indistinctly, not moving. 

“C’mon,” Rodney said, “I’m putting you on the couch so when you pass out you don’t fall.”

“Not gonn’ pass out,” John slurred. 

Rodney took his arm and pulled it over his shoulder. This time John made a noise, a really awful little noise, thin and tight and distressed, and Rodney gritted his teeth and half-dragged him into the other room. “Sorry,” Rodney said, “sorry,” and eased him as gently as he could down onto the couch. He wound up half-collapsed next to him, thinking that it was very difficult not to think about John’s body right now, but obviously it was entirely inappropriate.

“No,” John said, “no no, you’re fine, thanks,” but it was perfectly clear that his wide-open glassy eyes weren’t seeing a damn thing. 

“Don’t pass out,” Rodney said anxiously. 

“M’okay,” John said, breathing harshly. He was stark white and sweating, clammy, and his eyes sank closed slowly. “’Sokay. Thanks. Fine.”

Rodney worriedly got up and retrieved the glass of water from the kitchen, putting it and the bottle of pills on the end table by the couch. “You’ve gone really pale,” Rodney said. “Are you feeling all right?”

“I got shot, Rodney,” John said, eyes still closed. “Gon’ be a while ’til ‘malright again.” His voice was weaker, breathy, indistinct. 

“You seem pretty blasé about it,” Rodney said. 

“I been shot before,” John said. “Lived through’t. Not m’fav’rite thing, buh issokay.” He blinked unfocusedly up, not even looking in the right direction. “Wouldn’t’ve— sent home— fr’m— h’sspital— ‘f’wasn’t— mos’ly okay.” 

“I think mostly okay is the least accurate description I’ve ever heard,” Rodney said. John blinked slowly, and his eyes sank shut again. 

“M’fine,” he said dreamily, and passed out.

 

__

 

Rodney had hovered a while, wondering if Sheppard had actually died and unable to leave for fear that he would. Finally he’d made himself go back down to his apartment, retrieve his laptop, and come back upstairs so he could at least get some work done on his sorely overdue project before he got another irate telephone call. 

Or, worse, before those idiots screwed it up worse than it already was, without his input to keep them on the straight and narrow path. 

He settled into Sheppard’s recliner— which was much more comfortable than he’d expected, given how the guy didn’t seem much into lounging around watching TV— and immersed himself in work for a little while, until a sudden thought struck him and he went over to check John’s pulse. 

John’s pulse was slow but strong, though he didn’t so much as change the rhythm of his breathing in response to Rodney’s handling his neck. Rodney untied the man’s shoes and took them off, and swung his legs up onto the couch so he’d be a little more comfortable, then tucked the blue fleece blanket that had been neatly folded across the back of the couch over him. John didn’t react at all, didn’t stir or sigh or even twitch. It was unnerving. 

Maybe he was a deep sleeper anyway. Rodney didn’t know; he’d only spent one night with the guy and they’d both been ridiculously drunk. He’d woken the next morning in a terribly hung-over state, had puked in John’s bathroom, hadn’t even been able to attempt drinking coffee for nearly an hour, and it had taken him less time than that to put his foot into his mouth and wedge it firmly. 

It had occurred to him that John had only asked for help up the stairs, and might not be happy that he’d stuck around. But he really couldn’t bring himself to leave, because he wasn’t convinced John hadn’t fallen into a coma. And the guy quite clearly couldn’t fend for himself like this. What if he had to pee? What if he got a phone call? What if there was a fire? What if he choked to death trying to drink that glass of water? What if he just died, right there, on the couch, because he’d popped his stitches or something and was bleeding internally and wasn’t ever going to wake up again?

At that, Rodney had to go take his pulse again, and then he had to go Google what a normal resting pulse rate was for an athletic adult male, and then he had to go take his pulse again and count it properly. He spent the next half an hour Googling abdominal gunshot wounds, but since he didn’t actually know where in the abdomen John had gotten shot, it wasn’t terribly informative. Either he was already dead or he was going to be fine, more or less. He considered unbuttoning John’s shirt to check but discarded the idea as soon as he had it— John might understand him sticking around, but would really, really not be so understanding of being undressed. 

Congratulating himself on his understanding and consideration of others’ viewpoints, Rodney went into the kitchen and examined the contents of the plastic bag John had been clutching on the stairs. It had a bunch of hospital paperwork, discharge papers and instructions, so he read them. There was a little informative sheet on what it meant to no longer have a spleen, which sort of unnerved Rodney a little. He set it aside to reread later, and read the sheet detailing aftercare. 

Oh dear, John was supposed to be eating a particular diet every four hours. Rodney checked John’s fridge for ingredients and discovered immediately that he had nothing in the house. A single cup of yogurt, some sort of mushy apples, a couple slightly-shrivelled carrots, three bottles of cheapish American beer, and a shelf full of condiments made up the entire contents of his fridge. The pantry had a few dry goods and some canned produce. The freezer had a half a bag of frozen blueberries, three ice cube trays, a couple of frozen pizzas, and one sad, battered ice cream sandwich. None of these things were in any way remotely similar to the recommended list of foods on the information sheet.

Rodney made himself not check John’s pulse one more time, and went down to his own apartment to see what he had. He’d shopped recently, so there were a few more options, but still not really much by way of suitable items. So he gathered the things he had, and made a list of the things he’d need, and went back up. 

He let himself check John’s pulse again. Still the same, but no response at all was really unnerving him. John’s skin was cool to the touch, and Rodney started to fret that he was lapsing into a coma. Maybe he’d overdosed. Rodney retrieved the pill bottle and read the dosage instructions. He’d only seen Sheppard take one pill, and the recommended dose was 1-2. But maybe he’d had one too recently before that, or something. 

A phone rang, and Rodney startled, fished his out of his pocket, and realized it wasn’t his phone. It was Sheppard’s cellphone, sitting on the nightstand. He hesitated a moment, then remembered that John was expecting a coworker. He went in, looked at John’s phone, and read that the caller ID said “Cop Mama,” indicating that was how John had entered the name into his phonebook. Seemed reasonable enough that this might be his coworker, so Rodney picked up the phone. 

“Um, hello?” he said. 

“John?” The person on the other end, a woman, sounded very skeptical. 

“Oh, um, this is John’s phone,” Rodney said. “I, um, he’s kind of indisposed. Are you the coworker he wanted me to let in when they showed up?” 

“I, um,” she said, obviously caught off-guard. “Yes, I’m John’s coworker. Who are you?”

“Are you at the door?” Rodney asked. He peered out of the kitchen window and, sure enough, there was a woman standing on the steps. “I’ll be right down and I can explain then.”

She glanced up, and saw him. “Ah,” she said. “Okay.”

She was kind of hot, and Rodney reminded himself not to be an idiot, because his track record with attractive people was pretty lousy lately. She was black, her hair braided and wound into a tight small knot at the back of her head, and had a compact build and a competent air. “Hi,” Rodney said. “Um, I’m Rodney. Dr. Rodney McKay. I live downstairs.”

The woman’s eyebrows lifted slightly as he gestured her in. “Ah yes,” she said, and it wasn’t warm. _Shit_. “John talked about you sometimes and then all of a sudden, he stopped mentioning you at all. I had meant to ask him about that.”

“We had a… neighborly misunderstanding,” Rodney said, following her down the hallway and gesturing with— oh, he still had John’s cellphone in his hand, he had to remember to give it back. “But, um, it all seems sort of moot at the moment. I came out to get the paper and he was just about passed out at the bottom of the stairs, and I sort of felt like it would be wrong to leave him there.” He gestured at the foot of the stairs. “Kinda leaning on the bannister there. He was, um. He is, actually, in pretty rough shape. I helped him up to his apartment and I was going to let it go at that, but, um. He’s really not, um. I don’t think he should be alone.”

The woman considered him, then nodded slightly to herself. She held out her hand. “I’m Rachel,” she said. “I’ve worked with John for a couple of years. I offered to give him a ride home from the hospital but he’s a stubborn ass and insisted he’d handle it.”

“He’s kind of… strong-willed,” Rodney said, shaking her hand. “And I kind of am too, so, um.” He waved his hand as she released it. “But it seems kind of, well, petty to argue over poor word choices with a man who almost just died.”

“Puts things in perspective,” Rachel said, slanting him a calculating look. She started up the stairs, showing that she at least had been here before— but Rodney knew that, he remembered seeing her before. He’d thought maybe she was John’s girlfriend, at the time. He remembered it now. He’d checked out her ass, which he could see again now was beautifully shaped, but he steeled himself to look away and mind his manners. 

“Yes,” Rodney said. “Well, I should be honest and say I wasn’t really ever mad at him, the disagreement was almost entirely that I said something extremely clumsy and he has been mad at me ever since. So it’s not like I had anything to forgive. He did ask me for help just now, though,” he clarified, when the woman shot him a look over her shoulder. “I didn’t just decide to haul him up the stairs and let myself in.”

“Okay,” she said. She reached the door of John’s apartment, which was ajar, and went in.

“I got him as far as the couch,” Rodney said, hovering worriedly in the kitchen doorway. “But, um, he sort of passed out and I can’t wake him, and it’s been a couple of hours and I’m starting to wonder if that’s a problem.”

Rachel frowned at him, though she looked more thoughtful than disapproving, and went into the living room. Rodney hesitated, then followed her in. She bent over John’s prone form on the couch, and first carefully touched his shoulder, then put her hand on his forehead under his hair, then took his pulse at his wrist. “Yeah,” she said, “he’s kinda out cold. What painkillers is he on?”

Rodney went back into the kitchen and returned with the bottle. Rachel took it and frowned at it. “I only saw him take one pill,” Rodney said, “but maybe he’d had one before that?”

Rachel shook her head. “John doesn’t like taking pills,” she said. “He never takes more than the recommended dose, and half the time he doesn’t even take that. He’s pretty stubborn about pain.”

“In my experience he’s pretty stubborn about a lot of things,” Rodney said. 

Rachel smiled a little, despite herself. “That’s John,” she said. “Well, let me see the discharge papers. He probably needs some stuff.”

“Oh,” Rodney said, “um, I already made a list. He’s got nothing in the apartment, but I just went shopping a couple days ago, so I had some of the things this calls for.” He produced the list, and Rachel gave him an odd look, then took the list and looked it over. 

“I can pick this stuff up tonight or tomorrow morning, and drop it off before my shift,” she said. “Would that be soon enough?”

“Yeah,” Rodney said, “I have a few things he can eat. Enough to keep him alive until morning, and hopefully prevent intestinal adhesions.”

“That’d be good,” Rachel said. She looked back over to where John was a motionless lump on the couch. “It’s weird to see him sitting still.”

“He doesn’t, usually,” Rodney agreed. 

“He really hasn’t woken up at all,” Rachel said. 

“No,” Rodney said. “I took his pulse, took his shoes off, moved his legs, covered him with the blanket, took his pulse again— okay I took his pulse a lot— and nothing. I’m… I’m kind of a paranoid person but I’m worried he’s in a coma.”

“Technically,” Rachel said, “anything less than full consciousness is a coma.” She sighed, went to the kitchen sink and washed her hands, then came and bent over John. “Hey,” she said, quiet but intense. “John. I just need to check on you.”

Rodney hovered nervously, and John didn’t react. Rachel grimaced. “I hate wakin’ him up,” she said. “He’s got a bad startle response. Don’t ever grab him when he’s asleep, he might kill you.”

“Really,” Rodney said. 

“Oh,” Rachel said, “yeah.” She visibly steeled herself, bent over again, and said, “John,” and put her hand on his shoulder. The way she sort of cringed, she looked like she expected to get decked. Still no response. Her mouth twisted in annoyance or reluctance, and she moved her hand to his face. His breathing hitched as she cradled his jaw in one hand, and she raised an eyebrow. “C’mon, John,” she said, “just lemme see the whites of your eyes for a second.”

No response, so she grimaced and peeled one of his eyelids up with her thumb. “Nngh,” John said, and twisted his head away, batting ineffectually at her with one hand. “Five more minntz.”

Rachel laughed, and patted his cheek. “It’s okay, John,” she said. “You can go back to sleep.”

He opened both eyes, at that, and tried without much success to focus them on her before they slid shut again. “Whzzm,” he said. 

“I’ll see you later, John,” she said. 

“Mm,” he answered, and settled deeper into the pillows. 

Rachel turned to Rodney. “He’s fine,” she said. “It’s best he sleeps as much as possible anyway while he’s hurt this bad.”

Rodney nodded. “I just wasn’t willing to stick my finger in his eye,” he said. 

“Don’t blame you,” Rachel said. “But I’ve done a lot worse for John Sheppard. Mostly in the child care arena, as opposed to minor personal violations like that.” Seeing Rodney’s expression, she laughed. “I have a son about the same age as his kid, so we hang out a fair bit outside of work. I’ve known him pretty well for a couple years. And when I got stabbed two years ago he put his hand right into the wound to clamp the artery shut with his fingers, so I figure, I can touch his eyeball if I really gotta.”

Rodney stared at her in horror and she laughed so hard had to lean on the doorway. “I’m not even making it up,” she said.

“S’not,” John mumbled. “W’s gross.”

Rachel went back over to the couch, and kissed John’s cheek. “I’ll be back in the morning,” she said. “Okay?”

“Kay,” John said, eyes already closed. 

She went out past Rodney, who was still hovering by the kitchen doorway. “You’re gonna keep tabs on him tonight?” she asked. 

“Yeah,” Rodney said. 

She nodded, biting her lip. “I gotta get home to my kids,” she said. “I’d sort of thought if he was real bad, I’d drop ‘em at my mom’s and come back and stay with him, but it’s a school night and I hate doin’ that to them, it messes ‘em all up.”

“I got it,” Rodney said. “Don’t worry about it.” 

She nodded again. “Thanks,” she said. 


	6. Legendary In His Field

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John knows he's not tracking too well but he just sort of wants to know who took his pants off and when.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, I don't speak French, so I used Google Translate and some common sense. I hope I didn't screw it up. French-speakers, corrections are welcome.

 

“Aaauugh!” John thrashed his way free of the entangling flight harness— blanket— what— and the pain doubled him up and sent him gasping, wrapping around himself, disoriented and confused. He’d been about to crash, the helicopter’s turbines screaming, pouring smoke, blood everywhere— 

He curled around the pain in his side, shocked breathless, and kicked feebly out, whimpering a little. His apartment. He was in his apartment. It was night. Dark. TV was on. Movie or something. Shot. Right. He’d been shot. No helicopter crash. His apartment. His couch. He was asleep on his own couch. 

The panic was still there, still beating through his body in shuddering waves, leaving him nauseous, but the pain was real, and he rolled onto his back. 

“Holy fuck,” he yelled in startlement as a face hovered over him. “What the fuck! Jesus fuck!”

The intruder yelped and scrambled backward; John clawed his way upright, shuddering at the pain, and stared in blank panicked terror at the stranger. “What the fuck,” John said, “who the fuck, Jesus—“

“Man,” the intruder said, “you wake up cranky.”

“Who the fuck are you,” John said, but even as he said it he remembered that it was Rodney and he owed the guy a favor for helping him up the stairs but why the fuck was he still here it had to be like the middle of the night. “Jesus. Rodney. What the— fuck.” It hurt, it hurt really bad, and he gave up and collapsed, curling around the pain like it made a damn bit of difference what he did. 

“Pain meds wore off?” Rodney asked, a little more sympathetic, and there was a sound, a pill bottle rattled, and John perked up despite himself. 

“You scared the fuck out of me,” John said, and his voice was a lot thinner and more quavery than he’d’ve liked. 

“You’ve been out for, like, ten hours,” Rodney said. “I really didn’t think you should be left unattended. I actually took your pulse a couple of times, I really thought you were dead. You weren’t supposed to take that pill right when you got home, were you?”

Rodney sat down and helped John sit up enough to swallow the pill and the glass of water, and John was in too much pain not to let him. “Ow,” he said weakly, hating how pathetic he sounded. He was still shaking, and he couldn’t stop it, and Rodney noticed. 

“You’re in a pretty bad way,” Rodney observed. 

“You scared the shit out of me,” John said plaintively, lying down and pulling the blankets up around his shoulders, muffling himself. The terror was seeping out of him and leaving him weak and sick.

“You were kinda thrashing around in your sleep,” Rodney said. “I couldn’t tell if you were waking up or what.”

“Nn,” John said, “hurts,” and clutched the blanket tight as he shook. 

“Jeez,” Rodney said, sympathetic, “are you cold? I bet the bed’s warmer, want me to help you get there?”

“Not cold,” John said through his teeth, still shaking hard. “Just— hurts. Bad.”

“Oh,” Rodney said, “hey,” and his hand was on John’s shoulder, big hand, warm, steady, and John fought with his breathing and let Rodney rub soothing warm hands along his upper arm. He pressed his forehead into Rodney’s warm thigh and let his mind go blank, hands fisted in the blanket, jaw clenched, for a long empty stretch of time until finally the pill melted and he could unclench his fingers and his teeth. 

Rodney still had his hand on John’s arm. It should’ve been weird, probably— they weren’t on speaking terms, because Rodney thought he was a whore and he figured that made Rodney an asshole— but he was so hollowed-out, so brittle, that how solid Rodney was, how real he was, overrode everything else. He smelled like living person, body warmth and deodorant and laundry detergent and sweat and none of it very strong, but all of it definitely present and not clinical, and John relaxed by slow degrees into his touch. 

“I can’t believe they just put you in a cab and sent you home like this,” Rodney said. 

“Got nowhere else to go,” John said, too exhausted for anything but honesty. Silence stretched until he finally said, “What more could they do for me? I don’t need to be in a thousand-dollar-a-night joint to sleep and take a pill once in a while.”

“True,” Rodney said. He was sort of petting John, and it was really nice, which was weird, but John was pretty high now, enough so that he was willing to just sort of go with it. “I’ve been kind of thinking about what would happen if I got hurt like you are now and I… honestly don’t know. I don’t know anyone in this town. I wouldn’t even have coworkers stopping by— I work remote, telecommute, there’s nobody within a thousand miles.”

John sighed, rolled his head so he was basically in Rodney’s lap. “Most of my friends are on other continents,” he confessed, a little blurrily. “Or dead.” He thought. “Mostly dead.”

“That’s… grim,” Rodney said. 

“Occupational hazard,” John said. Then he remembered a little more about what he’d actually planned for the evening. “Hey, did Rachel come by?”

“Yeah,” Rodney said. “She’s really nice. She checked in, asked if you needed anything, I looked through your paperwork from the hospital and sent her out to get a couple things. She’s gonna get the stuff and come back this morning. You didn’t wake up the whole time. Oh, you’re supposed to have been eating every four to six hours.”

“Oh,” John said. 

“I made some of the stuff they suggested,” Rodney said. “It’s in the fridge. Could you get some down?”

“I don’t know,” John said. 

Rodney slid away from him, and John tried not to feel sad about that. He really didn’t need to be hung up on Rodney touching him. Jesus, they’d slept together once and the guy had been a dick about it. _Sad, John,_ he admonished himself. There were assorted clinking and clattering noises from the kitchen, and then Rodney came back and slid an arm under him, pulling him carefully upright. “Here you go.”

It was basically a smoothie, made of lord knew what, and John regarded it with trepidation. It took some doing, but he managed to swallow a few spoonfuls of it, and wash it down with some water.

“Thank you,” John said. 

“Don’t mention it,” Rodney said. John was still leaning on him, more and more as his limbs and eyelids got heavier. The pills definitely made him drowsy, some kind of narcotic. “Um,” Rodney went on in a minute. John tried to shift away a little bit, but he couldn’t even begin to exert the kind of force he’d need to not be lying on Rodney. 

“I kind of can’t move,” John admitted. 

“No, it’s fine,” Rodney said. “Um, I guess, I shouldn’t ambush you with this right now, but I just wanted to say I really, really, really didn’t mean to insult you. Before. I just.” John sighed. “Hear me out?”

Well. He kind of owed Rodney a favor now, so… “I’m listening,” John said.

“I don’t actually know you all that well,” Rodney said, “and so I don’t know if you’re sensitive about things, I don’t know what’s happened to you in the past, I don’t know your history or whatever. Me, I haven’t had a lot of luck at dating or even at friendships or, hell, at family. So I just meant that you’re really hot and probably have a lot more prospects than I do. That’s all. And I said it the worst possible way, and when I tried to make it not sound so shitty, I only wedged my foot deeper into my mouth. That’s what I do, and it’s why I live alone and work remotely and don’t have any friends.”

John considered that for a long moment. “Oh,” he said. Could what Rodney had said actually be excused under that? He considered it a bit longer. Maybe, actually. If you squinted. He chewed his lip. “I’m not very good with people either.”

“I’m like, a Grade A asshole,” Rodney said. “I’m actually legendary in my field. And I, I’m going to stop talking about that. I just, I just wanted to say I wasn’t actually _trying_ to be a dick, and I’m really, really sorry that what I said hurt you. It was clumsy, it was stupid, it was evidently predicated on a pretty erroneous assumption, and it wasn’t even necessary.”

“Oh,” John said again. He couldn’t think of what else to say. “Um, I’m pretty high right now.”

“I’m not hitting on you,” Rodney said. “I mean, I want to, but I’m not right now. I, obviously you’re not in any state for me to do something like that. And, oh God, I’m not just helping you so you’ll give me another chance to get into your pants. God. No. I— I just, I like you, Sheppard, I think you’re a good guy, and I don’t want you to die.”

John contemplated that. Everything was a little distant and floaty; he understood it all perfectly, he just couldn’t really make the connection to where he felt things about things. This all would mean a great deal to him the next time he was capable of feeling things, he rather suspected. “Well,” John said, “thanks, I don’t want to die.” He thought about it a moment longer. “Also I’m high as fuck.”

“I know,” Rodney said, “I know, I just, I had to say while the saying was good. And I’ll leave you alone when you’re okay to be left alone and I won’t hang around and I haven’t been trying to be creepy. I just. You kind of. John?”

John’s head had sunk down onto Rodney’s shoulder. “Yeah,” John said. “No, it’s good. The saying things. I get it. Later though. Don’t, um, go.” He was trying to say more, but his mouth wasn’t moving. 

Time gapped again. 

 

 

“No, no no no no _no_ you _moron_!” someone was ranting, and John jerked awake, heart pounding, pain jolting through him. He shoved himself upright, then fell over and curled around the deep, wrong ache. 

Memory came back faster than upon his last awakening, though it didn’t ease his confusion much— bullet wound, Rodney, why was Rodney yelling, John was in his bed but he didn’t remember how he got there, why was Rodney yelling. John shoved his hair back— greasy, disgusting— and shoved himself gingerly up onto an elbow, trying to avoid the worst of the pain. 

Yeah, he’d definitely fallen asleep on the couch in his clothes, he remembered the jeans in particular, and he was in his t-shirt and underwear now, and he hurt real bad and had to pee and Rodney was still yelling at somebody about how they weren’t taking basic physics into account and were they _brain-damaged_. 

As John struggled out of bed he finally made the connection that Rodney was probably on the phone. Nobody was answering back, so there was unlikely to be any immediate danger. Sagging a little in relief, John caught his breath and looked at the nightstand. It was 9:36 in the morning. He’d slept for 20 hours of the last 24, more or less. The other thing on the nightstand, besides the clock, was the bottle with his pain pills and antibiotics, and a full glass of water. 

He swallowed the pills and contemplated whether he could possibly wait to go pee until the pain pill kicked in. Less than a moment’s contemplation told him pretty unequivocally no, he really had to go take care of that now. So he edged carefully over to the side of the bed, swung his feet out, found the floor, and gathered himself. Wait a moment, he thought. He had been wearing a button-down shirt yesterday, and this was a t-shirt. 

For a long moment, he tried to remember getting up off the couch and changing his clothes. He didn’t remember any of it, nothing at all. Which meant that probably Rodney had helped, had undressed him, and that was weird, and he really didn’t know what to think of it. He probably ought to be skeeved out, but without Rodney he’d really be up shit creek right now. So that was something to consider. 

Rodney had apologized, though, he _did_ remember that. Did he buy it? 

John eased carefully onto his feet, grimacing. He didn’t really have a whole lot of choice other than to buy it. And maybe he’d been too hard on Rodney, maybe he should’ve let him apologize. Maybe he was just a little oversensitive about everyone in the goddamn fucking world assuming he’d put his dick in anything with a pulse. And he was a little annoyed that Rodney had kept stalking him. Although, well, the guy had just been looking out his windows, and he probably did that to everybody, so. 

John’s little temper flare-up died back down and shifted his weight gingerly to take a step. His knees wobbled, but held him, and he grabbed the wall and eased out of the bedroom through the doorway into the living room. Rodney was pacing out the other door, into the kitchen. “Yes,” Rodney was saying, “yes of course, if you’re an _idiot_.” Sure enough, one arm was bent, holding a phone to his face. “God! Why do you even bother to ask me if you’re not going to listen?” 

John found himself fighting a smile. Well, Rodney had claimed to be a legendary asshole. He didn’t seem to be lying about that. John mentally bumped him up a little in his probationary status, for being both amusing and consistent. 

“And so was your mother, I expect, you _fucking moron_. What? What! How— no. No. No! Absolutely no. Oh my God, be it on your head, and when it fails, you bet I’m calling Ingram myself and personally having you fired for your absolute blinding incompetence.” Rodney’s voice got louder; he had turned, and was coming back through the kitchen door. John leaned in the bedroom doorway and waited. 

“Oh, like I care. Now you listen to me, and you listen good. You are going to do it over, and you are going to have Kusanagi check your math, and you are not going to call me again, Kusanagi is. I don’t care, she’s smarter than you are.” Rodney appeared in the kitchen doorway, staring fiercely off into space in the manner of someone deeply absorbed in a telephone conversation. His eyes were pointed almost directly at John, but pretty clearly weren’t focusing on him. “No, really, I truly don’t care what you say at this point. Get it done.” He blinked, and saw John, and snapped, “I’m hanging up now,” and snapped the phone shut. 

“What are you doing up?” he said to John, worriedly, and the difference in his manner was like night and day— he was a completely different person. 

John jerked his chin toward the doorway behind Rodney. “Gotta pee,” he said. 

“Oh,” Rodney said. John propped one hand against the wall and made his laborious way across the living room. Rodney had sort of moved in. There was a distinct radius of debris around the recliner— laptop, charger, dirty plate, dirty mug, crumpled paper towel. Great. John gave it a narrow-eyed look, shoved off the wall to skirt the television, and caught himself on the doorway. Rodney had backed away into the kitchen, and watched, sort of hovering. “Can you get there by yourself?”

“Nearly there already,” John said a little shortly. He braced himself against the wall and made it the rest of the way to the bathroom, closing the door firmly behind himself. No way was he letting Rodney help. Not a fucking chance. Even if he fell and bled out on the bathroom floor. There were limits. No goddamn way. 

Doing his personal business was a procedure of greater elaborateness than he’d have cared to contemplate, but he had just enough strength afterward to hang onto the sink and wash his hands really well in hot water, then wash his face. He threw a longing glance at the shower, thought about his razor, but there was no way he could manage either. He was alarmingly scruffy by now, and his hair was disgusting, and he probably smelled like a wild animal through all the disinfectant and hospital soap. 

Bummer. At least he could reapply deodorant. Now he smelled like a wild animal splattered with disinfectant and Old Spice. Whether that was an improvement was debatable, but at least it was variety.

He sat on the closed toilet for a few minutes, gathering his strength, then opened the door and hauled himself up on the edge of the sink. He shuffled down the hall, made it to the kitchen, and Rodney gave him an alarmed look and made it over to him just in time to catch him as his knees gave out. 

“I gotcha,” Rodney said. He was kind of a powerful guy, sturdier than he looked, and John rested his head against one broad shoulder and thought vaguely about how embarrassing this was. Rodney hauled him over to the couch and eased him down, wrapped him in a blanket, propped him up with some pillows, and stood a moment looking down at him, hands on hips. “Can you drink coffee?”

John lit up a little. “Coffee,” he said. “I— a little cup. I can have a little cup.”

“Cream and sugar? Black? How do you take it?” Rodney asked, moving back toward the kitchen. 

“Cream and sugar, a little of each,” John said, then thought a moment. “Uh, or, black and sweet’s fine, I think I’m out of cream.”

“Oh,” Rodney said, poking his head back out of the kitchen, “there’s cream, I brought it up.” 

Of course Rodney only lived down the stairs. Of course he could bring anything he wanted. There was the sound of a spoon clinking in a cup, liquid pouring, Rodney puttering, and in a moment he came back with a giant mug John didn’t recognize in one hand, and in the other, one of John’s dumb souvenir mugs, which he handed over. 

This one said “Happiness Is Kandahar In My Rear-View”. John half-smiled at it (he’d picked it up at the Army PX; they had the corniest shit in there), then wrapped his fingers around it and sat enjoying the warmth and the smell. He couldn’t remember if they’d said he could have coffee or not. Rodney settled himself back into the recliner and picked up— oh, one of the laptops. There was more than one. He’d— oh, he’d brought his own power strip. Wow. 

“How long have you been awake?” John asked, eyeing Rodney over the edge of his mug. 

“Mm?” Rodney looked up. “Oh. Um, I crashed for a couple of hours last night, after you finally made it to bed. I sort of— I’m behind on this project so I haven’t been sleeping anything like normal hours lately anyway.”

John nodded at that, and finally took a sip of the coffee. It was heaven, it was the best coffee he’d ever had. It was— okay even given how much it being the first coffee he’d had in days boosted its apparent quality, it was _definitely_ not the store-brand generic ground coffee he bought in cans to keep around the house. “This is really good coffee,” he said. “Is this—“

“Yeah, it’s from Java Temple,” Rodney said. 

“They’re awesome, aren’t they?” John managed a grin, then went on, “And you _brought your own coffee_ from your apartment.”

“Well,” Rodney said, “yeah. It’s right there. I’ve spent enough of my life drinking whatever shitty coffee was in the lab. If I have a chance, I drink the best I can find. And the best I can find was right down the stairs so, why not?”

“Fair,” John said. He took another sip, knowing he needed to take it slow and make sure he wasn’t overtaxing his damaged system. He breathed in, breathed out, and decided that was as collected as he was going to get. “Um,” he said. “So, um, thanks for sticking around.”

Rodney nodded, looked a little worried, and said, “It occurred to me last night after I made my big apology that, um, you might not have been coherent enough to understand it, and that might have kind of been shitty of me.”

John half-smiled. “I understood,” he said. “I knew I couldn’t really think it through at the time, but I understood you.” 

“I’m,” Rodney said anxiously, fidgeting nervously with his coffee cup, “I’m not going so far as to ask for another chance at, um, at sleeping with you, because, well. That’d be some nerve. But I really— I liked hanging out with you and I thought maybe we could give being friends another try?”

He finished the sentence on a rush. John looked down into his coffee cup, chewing on his lip. “I’m not opposed to that,” John said. He glanced up. “But you’ve kind of been… I feel like you’ve kind of been stalking me and I’m a little uncomfortable with that.”

Rodney went a little wide-eyed, damningly, then blushed and looked down. “I don’t mean to,” he said, bright red. “I— the thing is, I just— just spent two years in a windowless basement in Siberia. I keep trying to stop looking out the windows but I can’t help it. And then I was upset that I pissed you off, and I thought I shouldn’t watch you in particular out my windows, and then of course since I’d told myself not to, I couldn’t stop— stop thinking about it. And I’m not very good at…” He risked a glance up at John, and grimaced. “Kind of what makes me so good at, at doing geniusy things is tha— that my brain seizes onto things and doesn’t let go, and that’s great for, for physics problems and the like but terrible, absolutely terrible, for, for awkward social situations.”

John nodded, not quite satisfied but closer. There was one more question he had to ask. “So, um,” he said, steeling himself to finish the thought, “I, um, don’t remember taking my pants off.”

Rodney blushed even deeper, but looked resolute. “You were conscious,” he said, “and kind of groaned at me a couple times when I suggested you move to the bed. You agreed that you were cold out here. I think, anyway; you weren’t using whole words. I helped you walk there, you struggled with the buttons on your shirt which I figured meant you want me to take it off you, so I did. I found you a t-shirt in the middle dresser drawer because I figured you’d be cold, and you unbuttoned your jeans yourself, so I pulled them off your legs for you and made you grab your underwear waistband so they wouldn’t come off too.” 

John considered that. “Okay,” he said. “All right. We’re cool.”

Rodney’s face lit up endearingly with relief, and John had to laugh and look back down at his coffee cup. The guy just had such a sweet smile. It wasn’t fair. But, John supposed, if he had really been a crazy stalker John would’ve been dead by now. 

John’s cellphone rang. Confused, John looked around for it— he always left it on the nightstand when he was at home, but it sounded like it was coming from the kitchen. Rodney got up and went to retrieve it, and then to John’s consternation _answered_ it. “Hey,” John said, but Rodney was already speaking. 

“I’ll be right down,” he said, and hung up. He looked at John. “What?”

“What?” John deflated, utterly confused. 

“Rachel,” Rodney said. “Gotta go let her in.” He shoved his feet into a pair of slippers John hadn’t noticed, and went out the door. John blinked after him, feeling lost and very much behind the curve. 

“John,” Rachel said, setting some things down in the kitchen with a clunking noise and the rustle of plastic. She was in her uniform, vest and hat and badge and gun, hair impeccable as ever, lip gloss flawless and understated. He’d never actually really noticed how pretty she was before. “It’s good to see you awake and aware. Kinda been a while. I thought last night maybe Rodney had roofied you.” 

Rodney looked horrified, and John felt bad for him. “No,” John said, “I roofied myself. I’m high as fuck now too, lady.” 

Rachel laughed. “Maybe the good drugs are what you needed in your life all along,” she said. She jerked her head at Rodney. “This guy stuck around, eh? _Tout est bon_?”

John grinned. “ _Bien sûr_ ,” he said. “ _Mais, il est canadien et parle probablement français_.”

“Oops,” Rachel said, but she didn’t seem particularly embarrassed. 

“ _Donc, ceci ne fonctionnera pas comme un code secret_ ,” John concluded. “ _Mais, merci de demander._ ”

“Whoa,” Rodney said. “Your French is better than mine. But yeah. It’s ok, if you have anything you need to discuss in secret, I can leave the room. Want some coffee?”

“I’d love coffee,” Rachel said. “But it’s probably cool, Rodney, I just wanted to make sure John was really okay.” 

Rodney nodded nervously and went into the kitchen, and Rachel sat down in the armchair on the other side of the couch. 

“Your hair’s kind of… scary like this,” Rachel said. 

“I can’t see it,” John said. “I’d stab a man in the face for a chance at a shower, but I don’t think it matters how much I roofie myself, I’m not gonna survive the attempt yet. Maybe tomorrow.”

Rachel laughed. “Hey, you made the highlight reel on the national news.”

John grimaced. “Really?”

“Oh yeah,” she said. “Some guy had a camera, and they caught the part where you yelled ‘are you fucking kidding me’, and the part where you called him an amateur and broke his hold. He even got the bit where you fell over, that was pretty sweet. So they edited that together with footage of your blood all over the place, in the snow and smeared across the refrigerator in the store and all that— there was a dramatic handprint, I dunno if that was yours?”

“Probably,” John said. “Shit. I— they didn’t use my name, did they?”

“Oh yeah, they did,” Rachel said. “Got your departmental headshot and all that. The local news had a little interview with Bates, too.”

“I’m fuckin’ pissed at Bates,” John said. 

“I know,” Rachel said. “I already went up one side of him and down the other. We’re all pretty mad.”

John rolled his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. 

Rodney came back in with a blue Air Force mug and handed it to Rachel, who smiled her thanks. She turned back to John. “So I’m just expecting that you’re not coming to the zoo with us this weekend, after all?”

John drooped a little, feeling it like a punch to the gut. “I was really lookin’ forward to this weekend,” he said quietly, feeling very small and subdued. He sighed. “The whole point of leaving the Air Force was so that I wouldn’t get shot and die.”

“You were in the Air Force?” Rodney asked. Both John and Rachel looked at him for a long moment, and then, in unison, both of them slowly turned their heads to look at Rachel’s mug, which had the logo pretty prominently displayed. “Oh. I, um. I work for them.”

“Really,” John said, blinking. “Wait, you… telecommute. To the Air Force.”

“Deep-space telemetry,” Rodney said. “Kind of their purview.”

“Huh,” John said. “I just flew helicopters and got shot at.”

“I guess that explains how laid-back you were about getting shot,” Rodney said. 

“Yeah,” John said. “Well, I quit so I could survive to raise my kid. Which is going so well. Rachel, Nancy thinks I hung up on her, I bet— my phone battery died before I could tell her why I couldn’t take Joey this weekend. So unless she was watching the news and saw my highlight reel, in which case I’d think she’d’ve tried to call me back… oh hey, I haven’t tried to call her back. Maybe I should try that.” 

“You’re pretty high,” Rachel said. “You might not make much sense. Want me to call her?” 

“No,” John said. “I can do it.”

“Okay,” she said. “Well, do you need anything else? I gotta get to work, but I can pick up stuff and bring it by when I get off. I’m only on eight hours today.”

“I don’t know,” John said vaguely, perturbed. He had suddenly lost the thread of the conversation. 

“I think you got it all already,” Rodney said. “Oh, I should be making him eat right now. Hey, you want anything? I got frozen waffles.”

Rachel laughed. “I had breakfast,” she said. “Thanks for the offer. That’s sweet of you.”

“Yeah,” John said, “Rodney’s really sweet when he’s not crammin’ his foot in his mouth.” Both of them were looking at him now, and he blinked, and said, “I don’t think that came out like I meant it to.”

“Fair enough,” Rachel said, “you’re sweet too when you’re not cramming your foot in your mouth or doing your turtle impression.”

“Turtle,” John said. “I don’t look like a turtle.”

“You act like one,” Rachel said. 

John blinked at her in genuine puzzlement. “Turtles are really slow,” he said. “I can run fast.”

“I meant, when you pull your armor up,” Rachel said, laughing. 

“My armor,” John said, genuinely lost. “If I had armor I wouldn’t have a big fuckin’ hole in my gut, now would I?”

“You’re adorable,” Rachel said, and stood up, reaching over to actually ruffle his hair. 

“Ew,” John said, “c’mon, my hair is so gross right now.” 

“I gotta get goin’,” she said, and followed Rodney into the kitchen. “Let me know if he needs anything else— my number’s in his phone, you can text me and I’ll get it by the end of my shift. I’m so glad you’re here for him.”

Rodney answered, and John zoned out for a little while, not realizing he’d done so until Rodney appeared next to him with a bowl. 

“Whoa,” John said, blinking. 

“Here,” Rodney said. He took the cold mostly-empty cup of coffee away from John, and replaced it with the bowl. “Eat that before you pass out.”

“Okay,” John said, and zoned out again. There was a long blank moment, and then Rodney sat down on the couch next to him. 

“Come on,” Rodney said, and John blinked at him in confusion. Wait, Rodney was spoon-feeding him. That was weird. He could feed himself. But, well, okay. He took the spoon from Rodney and ate a bite, then Rodney took it back and shoved another bite into his mouth, and he got annoyed and took it back but somehow keeping his attention on the bowl long enough to get the food into his mouth was more than he could manage. 

He wasn’t paying attention anymore by the time Rodney got up and left the couch, but he noticed when Rodney came back. “Hey,” he said, piteously confused. “Stop going away.”

Rodney sat next to him on the couch, and John focused on him with difficulty. “I won’t go anywhere,” Rodney said. “Not if you want me to stay.”

John needed to touch him, for some reason, maybe to be sure he was really there. The world was kind of far away and moving disjointedly and sluggishly, out of sync with his eyes and ears. John fell over in a strange floaty kind of slow-motion and wound up with his head pillowed comfortably in Rodney’s midsection, Rodney half-reclined and sort of curled around him. “I want you to stay,” John said, focusing very hard to make sure he got the words out. 

“Then I will,” Rodney said. “John, it’s okay. Just go to sleep.”

“Rodney,” John said, feeling that it was important and fighting to stay awake. “It’s okay that you called me a slut. It hurt my feelings but I shouldn’t, I mean…” He lost his train of thought, then triumphantly dragged it back on topic to conclude, “You can call me whatever you want.”

“I didn’t mean to call you a slut,” Rodney said. “But even if I did, I wouldn’t have meant it as an insult.”

“I’m not,” John said, forlorn, “I don’t… I haven’t slept with anybody but my ex-wife in ten years.” He felt very small. “I never even kissed a guy before. I’m not very… I don’t get out much.”

“You never—“ Rodney said, and his hand curled warm around John’s neck right where it met his shoulder on one side, big and comforting. He didn’t seem to know how to finish the sentence, so John went back to his story instead.

“I don’t do one-night stands,” John said, quiet and sort of miserable— Rodney’s comforting warmth was kind of making it worse, because it was reminding him of how cold he’d been for so long. “I don’t— but I guess I look like I do. I don’t— I dunno, it’s just how I’m wired, I don’t want people only once. If I like them enough to sleep with them, I like them enough to want to keep doing it. But people only want me once, I guess, the way I look or come across or whatever, and— there were a couple miscommunications, when I was first getting into the, um, the dating world, I guess— so I don’t— I usually just, just don’t, unless I’m sure they won’t… not call.”

“Oh, John,” Rodney said softly. 

John rubbed his face against Rodney’s leg, the cold sick little knot of misery that had been living in his gut for months now serving to ground him against the floatiness of the painkillers. “So I guess I… I didn’t tell you any of that so it’s not your fault— I just, it’s… when I realized you thought this was, we were—“ He stopped, hissing as a cramp shot through his gut. 

Rodney petted his hair, ruffling the short hair down near his neck. “No, John,” he said. “No, I was— I was worried _you’d_ only meant it as a one-night stand. I usually get really into people and then get my heart broken when they don’t want to keep me around. I figured that was what was going to happen, and I was trying to stave off the part where you think I’m pathetic by pretending right up front that I was cool with it.”

“Oh,” John said, and then another cramp curled him tight into a ball. “Aa _ah_ , fuck.” He wrapped his fist in the fabric of the blue fleece blanket and rode out the cramp, shivering, and another one after it. 

“John?” Rodney asked, worried. His hand went around John’s shoulder, supporting him.

“Cramp,” John said, closing his eyes and swallowing hard. “It— ah fuck.” He couldn’t hold back a whimper as he rode out another one. 

“Damn it,” Rodney said. “The info sheet mentioned this might happen. This is why you’re supposed to eat every four to six hours, and we let it go too long.” 

“Sorry,” John gasped tightly, slowly relaxing as the cramp dissipated. Then another one hit him and he grabbed the blanket again, shaking at how badly it hurt. 

“You might have to throw up,” Rodney said resignedly. “Or, you know.” He gestured vaguely. “The other end. We should probably put you in the bathroom.”

“‘Kay,” John gasped, and managed to get to his feet. 

There was a bad time, then, for a little while, which John spent mostly on the bathroom floor wrapped in the blue blanket. Rodney stayed either with him or nearby when he needed a little privacy, and did nice things for him like wiping his face with a cold cloth and holding him still so he didn’t thrash too much and reminding him worriedly that he was gonna be okay. At some point Rodney started going on about calling an ambulance, but John wouldn’t let him, and eventually he passed out on the bathroom floor until Rodney woke him up and dragged him back out to the couch. John curled up in the blue blanket with Rodney sitting next to him, a warm hand on his shoulder, and really passed out then.


	7. Cosmo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John meets Rodney's roommate, and remembers how to operate a telephone.

When he woke up, Rodney was playing a video game, so he watched that for a while, and when Rodney realized he was awake he made him eat more, which gave him cramps again but less badly this time. He curled back into his little miserable ball on the couch and drifted off again. 

This time when he woke up there was something warm against his cheek, something soft. Something vibrating slightly. Something that moved when he touched it curiously. He blinked awake, raised his head, and realized that there was a small gray cat curled up on the couch right next to where his face had been, blinking slitted green eyes blissfully at him. Rodney was typing rapidly, a couple of feet away. 

“Rodney,” he said levelly, “when did I get a cat?”

“Oh,” Rodney said, “that’s my cat, Cosmo. She was getting lonely, she’s used to me being around all the time. You don’t remember? We talked about this.”

“We did?” John blinked. 

“You’re not allergic,” Rodney said. 

“I’ve never had a cat, I don’t know if I’m allergic,” John said, regarding the cat with some suspicion. She stretched, extending claws, and yawned, showing fangs and a startlingly pink tongue, then curled back around and made a noise suspiciously like a sigh. 

“You’re not,” Rodney said. “We’d know by now if you were. She’s been asleep on your face for like an hour. She likes to sleep by faces.”

“She’s been asleep on my face for an hour,” John said. 

She blinked at him, then turned over so her head was upside-down and her paws in the air, and made a squeaking noise. “That’s an invitation to pet her belly,” Rodney said. “It’s not a trap when she does it like that. If she does it and her eyes are open it’s probably a trap. And if her tail is twitching it’s _definitely_ a trap.” 

“I don’t know anything about cats,” John said. 

“There’s not a lot to know,” Rodney said. “They’re soft. You pet them. You feed them. They tolerate you or don’t. You give them a place to shit and they shit there and you clean it sometimes. That’s about it. Anything else is just being a crazy cat person, which is optional.”

John stared at Rodney. The guy was moving in with him. He had brought his cat over. This was not real. This was not happening. “I don’t even,” he said, and gave up. Fuck, he had a roommate now. Whatever, he also no longer had a spleen, so there were things to get used to. At least his roommate was hot. 

“Just put your hand on her belly,” Rodney said. “If she likes it, she’ll purr. If she doesn’t, she’ll swat you and leave. She’s a good cat, she won’t break the skin.” He hesitated. “Much. Maybe a bit, by accident.”

John stared at the cat, who squinted one eye open enough to look back at him. She looked like she was smiling, but then, cats didn’t smile. He could also see the gleam of one fang behind her lip. Her paws looked soft and round, like little mittens, but he’d seen the claws when she stretched. He honestly didn’t know anything about cats. He’d never been allowed to have any kind of pet as a kid— they’d all been working animals, the horses and the barn cats and the guard dogs— and then he’d moved around so much with the military it hadn’t been possible. She did look soft, though. He reached out and ran one finger along the middle of her belly, where her short hair came together and changed direction. She had a white patch down her chest, and little white tips around the edges of her paws, and another under her throat, but the rest of her was silver-gray, and her nose dark gray. Her eyes were a brilliant green, and her fur _was_ incredibly soft.

She blinked her eye back shut and tucked her paws in tighter and purred. “Weird,” John said, and carefully, laboriously pushed himself to a sitting position. 

“Cats _are_ kinda weird,” Rodney said. He hadn’t really stopped typing. “Are you a dog person, then?”

“Nn,” John said, and hesitated. “I mean, I like them, I just don’t really know any. I never had pets.” He managed to get himself sitting upright, and fumbled for the pill bottle. 

“Ah ah ah!” Rodney said, staccato and serious. “You have another hour until you can take another one of those.”

“Huh?” John squinted at him. 

“You gotta wait another hour,” Rodney said. “I’m sorry if it hurts.”

John blinked muzzily, put the pill bottle back down, and rubbed his face. “Fuck,” he said, “it hurts anyway. Whatever.” Moving gingerly, he managed to get to his feet and get himself to the bathroom. He knew he was still too weak for a shower, but he managed to spongebathe himself a little bit, to knock the stink down to a manageable level that the deodorant had a chance against. He shuffled slowly back to his bedroom and with a great deal of trouble and many long pauses to get his strength back up, changed his clothes into a clean t-shirt and boxers, and pyjama pants. He even found a clean zip-front hoodie he could snuggle into, and nice wool socks, and he eventually shuffled out into the living room exhausted but feeling much more human. 

He sat down on the couch in his former spot, next to the cat. Cosmo rolled over, stood up, stretched with a luxurious arch of her back, then walked daintily into John’s lap and looked up at his face, blinking slowly. “Uh,” John said. “Um, what—“ 

She turned around twice, then settled herself down in his lap, tucking her paws under her chest and looking somehow pleased with herself. “What do I do now?” John asked. 

Rodney laughed. “Pet her, if you like,” he said. “She doesn’t care. She likes a warm lap.”

John petted her hesitantly, running a hand down the back of her head to her shoulders, then down her back. “She’s really soft,” he said.

“She’s never lived outside,” Rodney said. “Indoor cats tend to have much softer, finer coats. But some cats are just softer than others. I think she has one of the fancy gray breeds in her, Russian Blue or something maybe, which means her undercoat’s denser than usual. I dunno, though. They found her in a box.”

“A box,” John said. He was feeling more alert than he had been, at least; the pain was bad but he could breathe. He looked around the room. Rodney had a litter of debris around him, an empty Chee-Tos bag on the floor, a dirty dish set next to him, dirty empty coffee cup, the game controller to the video game console. 

“Yeah, someone had abandoned a whole litter of kittens in a cardboard box off the side of a country road,” Rodney said. “People do that, I don’t understand why.”

“I don’t understand people at all,” John said. “I’ve found human babies that way, though, if that makes you feel any better.”

“The opposite,” Rodney said. 

“Yeah,” John said. His apartment was a fucking disaster area. But the cat in his lap stretched out her chin and put it on his knee, and he could feel the vibrations in her throat as she purred. It was kind of… cute wasn’t strong enough a word. Soothing, maybe. “Uh, hey, where’s my phone? I should probably, um, call some people. What time is it?”

Rodney picked up the phone, glanced at it, and tossed it to him. John caught it with rather less coordination than usual. It was 3:45. Friday. Nancy was usually home by now on a Friday. He’d be on his way over in a few minutes to pick Joey up, if he hadn’t gotten himself shot. 

He sat, shoulders slumped, and looked down at his phone for a moment. He had six voicemails. He sighed, keyed in his code, and sat to listen to them. The second one had him scrambling for a pad of paper and scrawling down the phone number. Another lead on the case he— he was probably off that case now. Well, he’d pass it along. There was another one after that, from another contact annoyed he’d stood him up. “I waited an hour for you, buddy, what the fuck?”

“Sorry, man,” John muttered to himself. He wrote himself a note, “Call Jake and tell him what happened.”

The next one was Nancy. “John? God damn it, John, are we twelve now? Hanging up on me? God, I am fucking sick of lying to your goddamn son to cover your ass. He is going to be devastated when I tell him you’re standing him up again, and I’m running out of excuses to make for you.”

“Shit,” John muttered. He sat for a moment, eyes closed. That was probably right after he’d called her from the taxi and his battery had died. He really really should’ve called back. He really had to call back now. 

The next was from his chief. “Sheppard, let me know when you’re out of the hospital,” she said, “and I’ll get the paperwork started for ya. I know things’ve been tight for ya so I wanna make sure you don’t wind up going too long without getting paid. I’m just going to assume you’ll be out at least two months, but call me when you’ve had a followup and they know more. Don’t worry about this, Sheppard, okay? I’ll take care of everything I can.”

He snorted. She was kissing his ass, but it was kind of nice, she was the only one who ever bothered. She was new, a transfer in from a different station, and she was trying to make him into her little pet. It was sort of nice to have someone make the effort, though. Nobody had in a long time. Not since he was a hotshot pilot deemed worth the trouble. Now he was kind of nothing, so… 

The last one was Nancy again. “Joey cried for almost an hour when I told him you weren’t taking him this weekend,” she said. The timestamp was Thursday night. “He shut himself in his room and won’t talk to me. He’s six fucking years old, John, we’re not supposed to have to go through this for another seven years at least. You’re making my toddler into a surly teenager and I will never forgive you for it.”

“Jesus,” John muttered. He hung up on the voicemail program, and called the chief.

“Sheppard,” Anderson said warmly. “I take it you’re home?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Just got your voicemail. Thanks. They got me scheduled for a followup tomorrow, and then I’ll know more realistically how long I’m gonna be. At the moment, I’m wishing I was back on that morphine drip, but I’ll live once I quit whinin’.”

“I’ve got as much of the paperwork as possible completed,” she said. “It’ll be a snap to get the rest taken care of. I can stop by and have you sign it, if you like.”

“Y’know what,” John said, “if you see Rachel, she’s been stopping by anyway— I know she’s comin’ out here tonight. You know she’ll see to it that I sign everything I gotta. She’s good that way.”

“Oh, yes,” Anderson said, “I know I can count on Officer Emsworth. Good idea.”

“Cool,” John said. “Talk to you later.” He hung up, and sat a moment, collecting himself. 

“You should probably try to get a little more down your gullet,” Rodney said, coming over with the bowl. He’d stuck it back in the fridge, looked like. John gave it an unenthused look. 

“Yeah,” he said, “okay.”

“Got a lot of voicemails, huh?” Rodney sat awkwardly next to him, then reached over and petted the cat in John’s lap. This felt like an invasion of space, like Rodney was grabbing his crotch, but… well, he was only petting the cat. It was… not all that weird. Or was it? 

“Yeah,” John said, “mostly the rest of the people I was supposed to meet with that day, all bitching me out for standing them up.”

“Won’t they feel like assholes when they find out why you missed them,” Rodney said. 

John made himself swallow a couple of spoonfuls of the unexciting glop that was all he was currently allowed. He remembered not to make disgusted faces after only a few moments— Rodney had made this for him, out of his own damn kitchen, and for that kind of favor he could eat it and like it. Even if it felt right now like the guy was rooting around in his crotch uninvited. And it was sort of disconcerting that John’s crotch had absolutely no reaction to this, but, well, he’d lost a lot of blood and was on painkillers and really shouldn’t be worried about his sex life, so he pushed the thought aside.

The cat was purring enthusiastically now. “Maybe,” John said. “I’m really not looking forward to calling my ex-wife back, though.”

“Why not?” Rodney asked. 

John cocked an eyebrow at him. “She’s kind of tired of what a loser I am,” he said. He waved a hand. “I gotta call her back. Wish me luck and go put your headphones on so you don’t have to listen to this.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Rodney said, and retreated across the room. 

John stared at the phone a moment, steeling himself, then punched in the numbers and hit the green button. 

“Changed your mind?” Nancy asked, instead of a greeting. 

“My battery died,” John said. “I didn’t hang up on you. My battery died.”

“For a day and a half,” she said. 

“Yes,” he said. “Listen. We can fight about that in a minute. I just—“

“Oh, can we,” she said. “What if _I_ hang up on _you_?”

“Don’t,” he said. “Please. _Jesus_ —” The phone clicked and the line went dead. 

He lowered it, looked at it, numb with furious anger. “That went well,” Rodney said. 

John breathed in slowly, held it a moment, breathed out slowly. He really wanted to throw his phone across the room, but he knew it wouldn’t really do much good, and then he’d still be angry, and Joey would still think he’d punked out for no reason. “Think of the kid,” he said out loud. “Think of the kid.” He redialed the phone. 

It went, of course, to voicemail on the second ring, which meant that Nancy had manually sent it there. He waited through her greeting, and said, his voice absolutely flat and dispassionate, “Saturday morning after my shift I stumbled into an armed robbery in progress at a convenience store. I sustained a gunshot wound to the lower left torso. I spent six hours in surgery, then four days in the hospital. I tried to call you on my way home but my cellphone battery hadn’t been charged in the hospital, so it died. I got home and collapsed, and haven’t been coherent enough to operate my phone since then. I apologize it’s taken me this long to contact you but I was unable. When it is convenient for you, I would like an opportunity to speak to my son. I apologize for any inconvenience but I promise you, if I’d been able to avoid getting shot I would have.” 

He jammed the red button on the phone and flipped it shut. It took everything he had not to throw it across the room. “Jesus Christ,” he said, “I need a fuckin’ drink.”

“That’s definitely not compatible with the medication,” Rodney pointed out.

John gave him a narrow-eyed look. “No shit, Sherlock.” 

“Oh,” Rodney said, shrinking back behind his laptop a little bit. 

“Hey,” John said, repentant. “I’m not yelling at you. It’s not your fault she’s a bitch.” He breathed in, held it, breathed out, and said, “That’s not fair of me. She’s not a bitch, she’s a quite reasonable woman under a great deal of stress.”

Rodney blinked at him. “A reasonable woman?”

 John said, “We have a kid together, and kids have really sharp ears, and I can’t even let myself _think_ things like that because he’ll hear it, and that’s not fair to him. So I don’t let myself get in the habit of thinking things like that, and it’s easier.” He tilted his head. “She returns the favor. Mostly. I think.”

“Very mature of you,” Rodney said. 

“We’re fuckin’ adults, it shouldn’t be this hard,” John said. He rubbed his forehead, and continued plaintively, “How long til I can take that pill?”

“Finish the rest of that bowl and we’ll call it six hours,” Rodney said. “Er, meaning that the six hours are up, I mean, so you can take another one.”

John nodded wearily, picked up the bowl, and focused on not gagging. He managed to get it all down, and smiled weakly at Rodney as the man went and got him another glass of water. He took the pill, and petted the cat. “She hasn’t moved,” he said, marveling a little. He was warm and quite comfortable but wanted to move his leg. 

“She’ll sit there for hours if you don’t move,” Rodney said. 

“Must be nice,” John said, working his fingers through her thick fur. She sighed, and stretched out a little more. 

A cramp shot through his gut and he gritted his teeth. “Fuck,” he said, resigned, then, “ow. Ow fuck.”

“What is it?” Rodney asked, alarmed. 

“Cramp,” John said, closing his eyes and swallowing hard. “Fuckin’… ugh.” 

When he doubled over with the next one, the cat fled in alarm, and he rode it out, shivering. Rodney helped him into the bathroom, and he sat on the floor, thinking _don’t throw up, don’t throw up_. He shook through the cramps, but managed to hang onto his stomach contents, and eventually the pill kicked in. The cramps didn’t totally stop, but they hurt a lot less. 

He was only vaguely conscious, later, of Rodney picking him up off the floor and putting him into bed. 

 

 

“— All you do is sleep,” Rachel was saying, and John peeled his eyes open and looked at her. “You gotta ease up on the roofies.”

John blinked awake, realizing as he did so that the cat was back next to his face. “Did you meet my new friend?” he asked, gesturing. 

“I didn’t,” Rachel said. She reached over and offered her hand to Cosmo, who sniffed it, then headbutted it, rumbling into a purr that sounded loud at such close proximity. Rachel smiled and started petting her. 

“This is Cosmo,” John said. “Apparently she moved in while I was asleep, from Rodney’s apartment, along with his empty Chee-Tos bags and his Xbox.”

“She’s really soft,” Rachel marveled. “My cat’s not nearly this soft.”

“Rodney had some elaborate story about that,” John said. Rachel’s cat was shy and he’d pretty much never seen it except as a pair of eyes in the back of the closet or a retreating tail through the doorway. That was the kind of behavior he was used to from cats. He sat up very, very carefully. “Hey, I changed my own clothes, that’s progress.”

“You stink less,” Rachel commented, and presented him with a clipboard. “So gimme your John Hancock on some of these so I can get the chief off my back.”

John grunted absently, reading through the paperwork. Of course, he hadn’t gotten hurt on the job, so workman’s comp wouldn’t cover it, but temporary disability and the associated insurance would pick up most of the slack. He grimaced his way through the legalese, and signed wherever there were X’s, and sat for a while chewing on his lips. He had no idea how the hell he was gonna afford this. 

“I might have to seriously take up that night job I keep joking about,” he said. 

“That bad?” Rachel asked. She was petting Cosmo, who was in bliss at Rachel’s knowledgeable attack on her hot spots. 

John shook his head. “Is problem,” he said. He rubbed his face, wishing again that he’d managed to shave. He was at the itchy stage of beardedness, and probably looked like a crazed recluse. “Fuck.”

“The kid who shot you is probably gonna get the book thrown at him,” Rachel said. “They’re not gonna offer him any kind of plea deals because, well, like fifteen cops witnessed him shooting you, there’s really no doubt about what happened. He was on drugs, but nothing that would really excuse it, or even explain it.”

“Over 18?” John asked. “I wasn’t sure.”

“He’s almost 19,” Rachel said. 

John shook his head. “None of this makes me feel any better,” he said. “I guess I’m glad I didn’t have to shoot him. I guess there’s that.” 

“How’s Joey taking it?” Rachel asked.

“He’s not,” John answered shortly. He flipped the papers back over and handed her the clipboard. “I called Nancy on my way home from the hospital and my phone cut out, like, right away, and she thought I hung up on her, so when I finally got myself together enough to call her back today, she was still mad and hung up on me before I got a chance to explain.”

“What a bitch,” Rachel said, and she rarely showed anger but she was now. 

John shook his head sadly. “I understand her point of view. I call Thursday morning to punk out, hang up on her, call back Friday and expect her to be ready to hear whatever bullshit excuse I have for the, like, fourth time in a row?”

“It’s not your fault your schedule gets dicked with so much,” Rachel said. 

“Anderson thinks she’s doin’ me favors,” John said. “And she is. Just. It could be less… last-minute.” He scrubbed his hand through his gross hair, rubbed the back of his head, grimaced. “Joey’s really upset, Nancy said— she left me a voicemail, said he cried and locked himself in his room when she said I wasn’t taking him this weekend. I don’t blame her for being mad at me. I just wish I had a chance to explain. But she’s not wrong.”

“John,” Rachel said. “She _is_ wrong. She’s not the injured party, here. Literally.”

“Joey’s the one getting most hurt by it,” John said. 

“You’re the one with a goddamned bullet hole in your gut,” Rachel said. “You won’t stand up for yourself enough to admit how much that sucks? Give me her number and I’ll call her.”

“No,” John said. “I left her a message. If she listens to it, she’ll call me back. If she doesn’t listen to it, she won’t pick up when I call again. What’s the point?” He gestured, then let his hand drop. “I’ve already upset Joey enough for one weekend. Let it go. By the time she’s speaking to me again, I’ll be okay enough that Joey won’t be scared when I get to see him.”

“I swear to God, John Sheppard,” Rachel said, staring at him with an oddly intent expression, “something about you just isn’t quite right.”

 

 

He broke, eventually, and called Nancy again after Rachel left but before Rodney came back upstairs. It was a constant nagging ache somewhere not quite physical to think that just across town, Nancy was mad at him and Joey thought he didn’t want him. Joey was too young for that sort of disappointment, for that kind of loss of faith, Nancy was right. 

 _You’re already screwing him up, John,_ he thought grimly. He really wasn’t cut out for fatherhood, or civilian life at all. 

Nancy rejected his call— the voicemail prompt picked up after one ring, which meant it hadn’t gone there on its own; the phone was on and she’d responded. He hung up rather than leaving yet another message. If she hadn’t listened to the first one, she wouldn’t listen to a second; if she had, and was still rejecting his call, then she was even madder at him for getting himself shot than she had been about him just punking out, and that didn’t bear considering. 

Should he have made a point of telling her in his message that he hadn’t actually intended to get shot? He really hadn’t done anything to deserve it. Did that really need to be specified?

He curled up next to Cosmo in bed with his phone in his hand, thumb resting on the ‘send’ button with Nancy’s name selected, but not pressing down. There was no point. She wasn’t going to pick up for him and it wouldn’t help matters to keep trying. The ball was in her court and he had to wait for her. 

He flipped the phone shut and lay in a miserable little pile for a while, letting his mind circle the drain of terribly self-destructive and negative thoughts, like maybe Joey’d be better off with his life insurance money than his continually-disappointing living self, and so on and so forth. None of it was productive, all of it hurt, and it was fantastically self-indulgently self-pitying, but there wasn’t really anything available for him to use to stop it, so he lay there and let it continue. 

 Cosmo started bathing herself, and after a little while reached the end of her tail and kept going, licking his forehead. It was astonishingly raspy, like sandpaper, and he squinted, wondering how long she’d keep it up. She eventually seemed to notice that she wasn’t grooming herself anymore, and stood up and moved down, investigating his beard. She started grooming his beard, and that finally made him laugh. 

“All right, all right,” he said, and petted her. She licked his hand instead, and he laughed at how ticklish that was. He heard the apartment door open, recognized Rodney’s distinctive slipper-clad gait. Cosmo looked at the door for a moment, then captured his hand between both of her forepaws and went back to fiercely grooming his hand. He laughed at her intensity, and Rodney poked his head around the door. 

“Your cat is insane,” John said. “She was trying to wash my beard.”

“Oh,” Rodney said. He leaned in the doorway. “I heard you laughing and thought maybe you were on the phone.”

John’s bleak mood returned and he lay limply watching the cat work her way across his fingers. “No,” he said. “She’s… not takin’ my calls.” 

“Does she know you’re,” Rodney gestured, agitated.

“I don’t know,” John said. “I presume not.”

Rodney came a little closer but hesitated, as though he’d considered sitting on the bed but thought better of it. “Sucks,” he said. “Hey, wanna play a video game?”

Cosmo abruptly let go of John’s hand and jumped off the bed. John watched her go, oddly bereft. “Sure,” he said, without much interest, but dragged himself to his feet and out into the living room. 

He wasn’t very good at any of the games but he managed to stay conscious longer than he had at a stretch since getting shot, so he considered that a minor victory. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah I self-inserted my cat. So sue me. Her real name is Chita and she's ridiculous.


	8. People Do It Every Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I promised we'd get back to this.  
> The sum total of John's gay freakout.

John had nightmares, panic nightmares, like he did on his bad nights, and thrashed his way into consciousness screaming, but he was barely aware of it; darkness and warmth sucked him down again and he slept again for a little while. He woke again, finally, clawing his way to groggy awareness as he more often did lately under the drugs’ influence, and reached full awareness with a final blink and twitch. 

Someone was in his bed, and it wasn’t Joey; John was the little spoon, and they were curled around his back, pleasantly warm and reassuringly solid, whuffing slightly with slow shallow breaths against the back of his neck. It took him about three breaths to realize it wasn’t Nancy, and around then his eyes caught on that the arm around his waist was not a woman’s arm, it was thick and heavy and had long blunt fingers and he knew those fingers, that was Rodney’s hand. Rodney was in his bed. 

John thought about freaking out, then stopped himself, because it was Rodney, he knew Rodney, and it wasn’t a joke and probably wasn’t even a come-on. He thought about it calmly, and while he was doing that he noticed that he didn’t really hurt, and he was warm and very comfortable, and around then he remembered that he must have had nightmares last night, his throat hurt like he’d been screaming. 

Ah. Rodney must still have been here. 

That must have been rather terrifying. John knew sometimes he didn’t wake lucid from the nightmares, and would seem awake but would still be insisting that various events from his past were currently taking place. He’d terrified Nancy with it on multiple occasions, and had frightened Joey more than once. Usually he’d wake up as soon as Joey started crying and would come back to himself. But another adult’s voice generally didn’t snap him back to awareness nearly as fast. He must have just fallen back asleep without fully waking, last night. 

He wriggled out of Rodney’s grasp and carefully, carefully rolled to his feet. He was healing fast, he thought with some pleasure; it wasn’t an epic struggle to get to his feet. He wandered into the bathroom, washed his face, then into the kitchen and made coffee, moving almost like a normal person. It was pretty great. 

He’d made his way out to the living room before Rodney stumbled out of the bedroom, bleary-eyed and rumpled and a little alarmed. “Hey,” John said. “Sorry if I thrashed around and screamed a lot last night.”

Rodney rubbed his face. “I’m sorry if it seemed weird when you woke up and I was spooning you— I didn’t actually mean to fall asleep like that, but you were, uh, you were really upset and trying to get out of the apartment and I sort of had to wrestle you back into bed, but once I had your arms trapped you kind of chilled out, so I just stayed like that. You were still yelling stuff but it didn’t really make any sense. I just thought, I really had to keep you from going and falling down the stairs or something, you were really not lucid.”

John gave him a sad little half-smile. “Yeah,” he said. “I kind of… it happens every now and then.” He made himself add, “Thanks. You did the right thing.”

“I really wasn’t sure if you were dreaming or awake or what, but the things you were saying didn’t make any sense,” Rodney said. 

“Yeah,” John said. He pointed at the kitchen. “I made coffee.” 

Rodney didn’t get that it was a distraction, so he came back in with his coffee cup and picked right up where he left off. “You were screaming about wires on your fingers,” he said. “And then you kept yelling, I think maybe they were people’s names. You seemed really upset. It sounds like it was a hell of a dream.”

John gritted his teeth. “It wasn’t a dream, Rodney,” he said. 

Rodney blinked at him. “What?”

“It was a flashback,” he said. “I get those. It’s, it’s pretty common. Don’t worry about it.”

“A flashback,” Rodney echoed.

“Those were names,” John said, “and they’re almost all dead, and that’s really all you need to know.”

“Dead,” Rodney said, shocked. “How?”

“In an op gone wrong in Afghanistan,” John said. “Pretty much the last thing I did in the Air Force before I got out was get shot down and captured and watch a bunch of people under my command get killed. So I sometimes flash back to it. It’s a pretty classic PTSD thing to do.”

“Oh,” Rodney said. “I always forget you’ve been in a war.”

“More than one,” John said, grinning toothily.  Time to change the subject. He looked around the room keenly. “I think I’m feeling well enough that this pigsty is going to get cleaned today.”

It was a little over-ambitious, but John managed, with the aid of a strategically-timed pain pill, to power through a couple of hours’ worth of slow-paced tidying. Rodney, to his surprise, stuck around for most of it. He zonked out on the couch for a little while, and then Rodney saved him needing to call a cab by driving him to his doctor’s appointment.

At the doctor’s, they tsk’d and hemmed and hawed about all sorts of things, and were pleased with some and displeased with others. On the way home they stopped and got milkshakes at the ice cream shop near the doctor’s office, since the doctor had said it would probably be okay. 

John sort of felt human, and it was enough to ease the cold little ache in his ribs where he was ceaselessly fretting about Nancy. 

He slept most of the rest of the day, but he felt less close to death and more like a real person who could have real interactions with the world. When he woke up, Rodney was futzing in the kitchen— doing dishes, thank God, the place was a disaster— and brought him something to eat. 

“Feel up to a tournament?” Rodney asked, picking up the video game controller. 

“Sure,” John said. “I’m lucid enough, you might actually have to worry.” 

They spent the next four hours straight on video games. John didn’t do as well on painkillers as he had on alcohol, especially since Rodney wasn’t at all impaired, but he held his own; it was actually a pretty fair matchup this way, he thought, but decided not to point it out because Rodney _was_ being awfully nice, in general, and rubbing it in his face was not only bad sportsmanship (which seldom deterred John) but also ungrateful (which _was_ a plausible deterrent). It got dark, and Rodney absently said, “Hey, we should order a pizza.” A long moment passed while John stared at him under lowered brows. So much for being nice.

“Oh,” Rodney said finally. “I forgot. Right.”

Rodney went back down to his apartment to find himself dinner, and John went back to his obsessive contemplation of his phone. He dialed Nancy’s number again, and stared at it, and thought about it, and finally hit “send”. 

This time it rang three times before sending him to voicemail, which meant she had actually missed the call rather than rejecting it. As improvements went, it wasn’t much. He didn’t leave a voicemail, but hung up, and plugged the phone in to be sure the battery wouldn’t go dead if she did call him back. 

 

Rodney came back up after dinner and they watched a movie, a superhero action flick John hadn’t actually seen. He was a little too spacey to follow all of it, but thought he’d probably enjoy it if he rewatched it. Mostly, he wished desperately for popcorn, but settled for a peanut butter sandwich. Solid food like that was a big deal and he tried to enjoy it. 

Digesting it made him cold, and he curled up in the fleece blanket on the couch and tried to coax the cat in with him. She wasn’t interested; apparently she preferred to sleep on subjects who didn’t particularly want her to. Of course. He shivered a little, and Rodney sat next to him. 

“You ok?” Rodney asked, watching him worriedly. 

“Yeah,” John said, and shivered again. He thought about leaning against Rodney. He knew those solid shoulders were warm; Rodney gave off a lot of heat. He wanted to touch him. He was probably lucid enough that it was time to have this conversation. He cleared his throat. “So, um.”

Rodney frowned. “You’re kicking me out,” he said, mouth slanting anxiously down on one side. 

“What?” John blinked. “No!” He shook his head, and laughed as Rodney’s expression changed to one of perplexity. “No, that wasn’t where I was going with that.” He looked down at his hands. “Um, kind of… more or less the opposite.”

“The opposite,” Rodney said. “What, you want me to move in?”

John laughed, amused. “You kind of already have,” he said, waving a hand around the room. “Your cat lives here, even. So um. I think we’ve established that we can be reasonably good friends.” Cosmo jumped up next to him, and he petted her for a moment, collecting himself. “So I was just going to ask if, um. If, um, you wanted to, um.” He grimaced, and gestured vaguely. 

Rodney was staring at him. “If I wanted to what?” he asked. 

“Try, um,” John said, “maybe, um, giving the more-than-friends thing another shot.” He flicked a glance at Rodney, but went back to the cat before he could even really register Rodney’s face; he just couldn’t meet his eyes, he felt so exposed. 

“Wait, really?” Rodney asked. 

“Yeah,” John said, frowning fiercely at his hands, self-conscious. Cosmo butted at his arm and started purring. “I mean. That is. If you wanted.” He gathered the cat into his lap and petted her intently. 

“You’ve gone from hating my guts and thinking I’m a creepy stalker to wanting to date me?” Rodney asked, incredulous.

“I never hated your guts,” John said, stung. “I just— it seemed like you wanted to… _collect_ me and I didn’t want to, to be collected. But if that’s, it seems clearer that’s not, you know, what you wanted.” He looked fixedly down at the cat, who was blissfully kneading her paws against his thigh like it was dough and she was a baker, purring so loudly it was audible even over the painful thudding of his heart. “I mean. If not, that’s cool too. I just, I just wondered if you wanted to give it a shot, is all. But we don’t have to, we’re good just as friends too, if you’d rather.”

“Oh,” Rodney said, “are you nuts? Of course I do. Jesus, Sheppard, you’re— you’re the hottest person I’ve ever seen naked, and you like the same things I do, and you seem not to find me totally offensive like, let’s be honest, most people do, and I _hate_ kids, but I even think your kid is cute, that’s how thoroughly I’ve fallen for you.” 

John narrowed his eyes a little at the hating kids line, but it wasn’t like Rodney’s completely absent sense of tact was new information, and he’d made his decision already. “I just kinda, I sprang it on you last time, pretty much,” he said, “and then booted you out. I don’t mean to be calling all the shots, I just, I dunno if you’re on board with this or what.”

“I’m _so_ on board,” Rodney said. “Sign me up.”

John grinned at him, immeasurably relieved, then it was too much emotion so he looked back down at Cosmo, who blinked up blissfully at him. “So,” he said, and had to pause to laugh self-consciously, “so the thing is, um, I’ve never actually really been with a dude, so um, you’re the one with the map.”

Rodney looked at him blankly. “Um,” he said. “I, um. I haven’t either, as it happens. Not really.”

They stared at each other. “Wait,” John said, “you said you were gay.”

“When did I say that?” Rodney looked almost alarmed. “I’m fairly sure I’ve never said that in my life.”

John blinked, drawing a blank. “Wait,” he said, “how _did_ I know that?” 

“I’m not saying I’m not into it, because I am,” Rodney said, “and it’s not that I haven’t had the odd dalliance, in my day, though they’ve been, well, cursory at best, but uh, I’ve only really ever had, well it would be optimistic to call them relationships I guess, even for the sake of argument, with women.”

“Julie Newmar,” John said, remembering. “I made some crack about my kid not liking Julie Newmar and you got a little tight around the mouth about little boys not all liking chicks and I realized I was bein’ a dick.”

“Oh,” Rodney said, “yeah, I remember that.” He nodded to himself. “Yeah, I’m, well— I guess I’m bi. It’s— it’s confusing.”

“This shit wasn’t supposed to be confusing after, like twenty,” John said a little glumly. “And I’m not saying I wasn’t confused before that. But here’s the weirdest thing, like everybody I know has been assuming I was gay forever. Even my damn ex-wife used to go on and on about how bi and repressed I was and believe me, I did not give her any reason to believe I was in any way disinterested in her, you know, female equipment. Because, y’know, _that_ wasn’t ever our problem.”

“Well,” Rodney said. “I’ve been wishing you were gay since I first met you, but I don’t know about everybody else, I just know about me.”

John leaned his shoulder against Rodney’s and smiled down at the cat, whose affections had been diverted from his thigh to a fold of the blanket. She really liked the fleece and was kneading it and looking so happy her eyes were just about crossed. John could sympathize, he was hoping to get to that state himself rather soon. He turned his head and looked, close-range, at Rodney’s face. “Well,” he said, “I don’t have a map, but I bet it’s not that hard to figure out.”

“People do it every day,” Rodney said, and kissed him. 

High on painkillers and half-immobilized by injury wasn’t really the best way to learn how to have gay sex, but it wasn’t a serious impediment to getting a guy into your bed. Rodney handled John like a rare tissue-thin porcelain teacup, one of the really delicate and expensive ones, and it both amused and depressed John— amused, because no one had ever treated him like that before, and depressed because it was necessary: he still had no strength and could barely move. 

Rodney kissed him, trembling with eagerness, endearingly excited, and John pulled him in and wrapped his arms around Rodney’s broad shoulders and thought alternately about how weird this was and how great it was. It eventually got sort of awkward, trying to stay in a position that didn’t hurt John while on the couch, so after the third or fourth painful flinch he pulled away and said, “You know, I have a perfectly reasonable bed about twenty feet away.”

“Yeah?” Rodney was flushed deep red, mouth wet, lips swollen, and God his eyes were so blue, John hadn’t known people could look like that in real life. 

“Yeah,” John said, a little dazed.

Rodney disentangled himself and stood up, and pulled John gently up by his hands. He steadied John with his hands on his shoulders, then cupped his hands around John’s jaw and pulled him down a little, cradling his face, to take his mouth again. John kissed him until he felt a little dizzy, then pulled away and grabbed his hand to tow him across the room and into the bedroom.

John was too delicate for anything ambitious, and still too fragile and drugged to really muster a normal sexual response, but he could get naked, and rub his skin up against the unexpected softness of Rodney’s pale, freckled naked skin. Rodney was beautiful, soft but sleek and powerful like a marine mammal, and John wouldn’t let him turn out the bedside lamp and stopped his mouth with kisses when he babbled nervously about not being in very good shape, and then nibbled at the edge of his jaw because that was a lot more effective at shutting down his speech centers. 

The skin at the insides of Rodney’s arms, just above his elbows, was cream-pale and ribboned with the faintest tracery of blue veins. John spent a while following the map of veins down to the inside of Rodney’s elbow with his tongue. Rodney was ticklish, but the twitching subsided into little gasps of arousal after a moment. It probably helped that John was delicately holding him down with the entire length of his body stretched out across Rodney’s. 

“You’re beautiful,” John said a little shyly, half-whispering as he paused, tired, to rest his head on Rodney’s chest. Rodney’s heart thumped loud and fast in his ear. John was really not strong enough for shenanigans at this point, and was getting really self-conscious that Rodney would notice he wasn’t hard. 

“I’m fat,” Rodney said. “You must think so.”

John shook his head, and nuzzled his face into Rodney’s sparse, pale chest hair. He’d probably been blond as a child, probably up through his early twenties, John thought, given how pale his body hair still was. He wondered what Rodney had looked like at ten, at twenty, at thirty. “That’s— I mean it, you’re beautiful,” John said. He smoothed his hand down Rodney’s sleek flank. Rodney was hard, and John wanted to do something about it, but something that wouldn’t call attention to his own particular issue in that arena. 

Well. One sure-fire technique was surely at his disposal, and he knew it didn’t take much skill. He gathered his strength and wriggled down the bed, and took Rodney’s erection in his hand, pausing to look at it. Long ago, he’d done this under duress, but there had been no finesse to that. And he’d done it for fun, to a strap-on dildo, for Nancy’s gratification (she really truly had known he was bi before he did, and had found it hot). Rodney put a hand behind his head and looked down at him. “Are you—“ 

“Yeah,” John said, and sucked Rodney’s cockhead into his mouth. It was hot, the skin soft like velvet against his lips, and he closed his eyes and felt arousal curl hot through his belly as Rodney made the most affecting little gasping moan. It was, it was _hot_ , and he set to work with an intensity of purpose he hadn’t expected he’d be able to muster. 

He used his hand and his mouth and wished he had the focus and agility to do more. But what he could manage was probably enough, for now, so he kept it simple and to the point, hand and lips and tongue and just a little bit of throat, bobbing his head and hollowing his cheeks and pausing, tongue busy, to catch his breath. Rodney made increasingly affecting noises, panting and gasping, hitching his hips and occasionally blaspheming. 

“John,” Rodney panted, “oh God, I’m— I’m so close—“ 

 _What the hell_ , John thought, _why not_ , and swallowed him down as far as he could, until his lips met his stroking hand, pumping furiously until Rodney’s whole body stiffened and his breath caught in the hottest goddamn squawking noise anyone had ever made in human history. Rodney’s dick pulsed, but it was far enough back that John only got the faintest bitter taste before he swallowed. As Rodney shuddered to breathless stillness, John thought smugly, _that’s how you do it_ , and pulled off, licking his way up the shaft one last time. 

“Holy shit,” Rodney said. John gathered the last of his strength and crawled back up the bed to collapse next to him on the pillow. “Holy shit, Sheppard, I thought you said you were new at this.”

“Turns out I’m a quick study,” John said, letting his smugness radiate through his exhaustion. “Hope that’s on the accepted list of things I can swallow.” He kissed Rodney’s jaw, right up by the ear. 

“Oh man,” Rodney said. He came to himself a little bit, and stirred, turning a bit more toward John. “Hey, do you need—“ 

“I’m good,” John said. “I’m probably gonna pass out now.”

“Oh,” Rodney said. “Okay.” He kissed John’s mouth, slow and gentle, and John let his eyes sink shut. _So I’m a homo now_ , he thought fuzzily as his body melted into the spaces Rodney had left for it: _Good_ , was the only conclusion his tired and spaced-out consciousness could come up with before it fled.

 

 


	9. The Big Debrief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which many, many questions are answered, including questions Rodney didn't know he had.

 

 

The base psychologist was earnestly explaining to Rodney all of the ramifications of his condition, the long-term plan for his treatment, the various side-effects of the medications and the way they’d behave as he tapered off when his behavior stabilized, but it was hard to hear him over the ringing alarm. Rodney tried to ask him to speak up but the alarm kept sounding, something shrill, trilling like an electronic bell, and he had to shut it off, he knew he had to shut it off before they hung up— before— 

He blinked his eyes open. Telephone. It was the telephone, but it wasn’t his telephone, wasn’t the ringtone he’d been using since he got back from Siberia. He fumbled, half-asleep, and groggily picked up the phone from the unfamiliar nightstand. “Hello?”

“John?” It was a woman’s voice. “Oh my God. John?”

Rodney blinked, and woke up a little, and said, “Wait a minute,” and John’s hand appeared out from under the covers and grabbed the phone. 

“Nancy,” John said. Rodney could clearly hear the woman’s agitated voice.

“Oh my God, John,” she said, “I’m so sorry, oh my God, I didn’t— Joey saw you on TV and he’s crying because he thinks— oh my God. John, are you all right?”

“Got shot,” John said, hoarse but snippy. “Tried to tell you but I couldn’t get through. What, did your phone break?”

She was sobbing, audibly. Rodney blinked muzzily at the clock by the bed. It was like six in the morning on a Sunday. “I didn’t— I was so _mad_ , John, I thought you hung up on me, it sounded like you had, and I was so angry— I didn’t realize— I’m so sorry. Oh my God. John. Where are you?”

“I’m at home,” John said. “I’m fine, Nancy, it’s been a week already, if I was gonna die I already would’ve.”

“Why didn’t the hospital call me?” she demanded. “Why didn’t anyone call me?”

“I asked them to let me be the one to call you,” John said. “I didn’t want to upset you. Fuckin’ hilarious, in retrospect. Lemme talk to Joey so he knows I’m okay.”

“He’s not here,” Nancy said, a little quieter but still audible given that John’s face was still sort of mashed into Rodney’s shoulder and so the phone was almost as close to Rodney’s ear as to John’s. “I had plans this weekend, so I had to scramble him a babysitter. They let him watch TV super early in the morning, apparently, because I just woke up with him sobbing down the phone at me.” 

“Jesus,” John said. “I didn’t know they’d show it on TV. I thought Rachel was kidding.”

“Apparently they showed a lot of blood,” Nancy said. “Listen, where are you? I’ll go get Joey and bring him to see you, if you’re all right.” She’d pulled herself together pretty quickly. 

“I’m at home,” John said.

“Who answered your phone, then?” she asked. 

“I guess it’s none of your business,” John said, his voice going thin-edged and hard. “I guess it doesn’t matter to you, or you’d take my calls.” He sat up on one elbow with a grimace, rubbing his face. Cosmo squeaked indignantly and jumped off the bed, dislodged from her sleeping spot next to John’s far shoulder. “I’m sorry, I’m really upset and I’m only saying things I’ll regret. Give me the phone number where Joey is, I really want to talk to him.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Nancy said. 

“I want,” John said very calmly but firmly, “to talk to him. I have been prevented from speaking with my son for a week and I would like a chance to speak to him.”

“I don’t know which phone is better but I’ll tell them to call you,” Nancy said. 

John hesitated, and Rodney watched his eyes narrow, watched him reaching a conclusion. “Where is he?” he asked, still deadly calm.

“He’s at, at a friend’s,” Nancy said. 

“I have, like, one rule,” John said, eyes squinted, “and that rule is that you _don’t fucking lie to me about Joey_ , Nancy. Where is my son?” His voice was still quiet but had gone more intense than a shout, and Rodney shrank back a little, wide-eyed— he had seen John Sheppard upset but he had never seen him this angry.

Nancy made a noise. “God damn it,” she said, quiet, defeated. “He’s at your father’s. Patrick had been asking me so nicely, he wanted to see him, I just—“

“Jesus Christ,” John said, but he didn’t look angry, he looked sick. 

“John, I know you and he have had your differences and I respect that, I do, but he just wants to know his grandchild,” Nancy said pleadingly. 

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” John said again, “not you too.”

“John,” Nancy said, “I’m not taking his side or whatever, I just—“ 

“You,” John said, sitting up the rest of the way, face desperate, “have no idea, because I haven’t told you, because I didn’t think I needed to. You didn’t used to be the kind of person who would lie to me, Nancy. You have no idea what that man is capable of. Get my baby away from him, Nancy. Don’t let him get his claws in you.”

He sounded more distraught than Rodney had ever heard him, and he’d thought he’d heard John Sheppard sound pretty distraught. Nancy said something indistinct, one syllable, probably John’s name.

“I said get my baby away from him,” John said. “I am not fucking around, Nancy, I am not being stubborn or whatever the fuck he has told you I am, you get Joey away from there and you never leave him alone with that man again, do you hear me? Do you hear me, Nancy?” 

John was shaking, Rodney realized in alarm, and he sat up too. Now he was far enough away that he couldn’t hear Nancy’s responses anymore. “No,” John said, visibly upset. “I don’t care. You get him out of there.”

She said something else, and John closed his eyes, and said, “No, _right now_ ,” and hung up the phone. He was still shaking. 

“John,” Rodney said quietly, horrified. “You’re shaking. Let me get you a glass of water.” He slipped out of the bed and realized he was completely naked. “Uh. Pants.” He cast about for his pants, finally finding them in a heap by the bed, as if they’d been stripped off in a hurry. Well, they had. 

John was sitting in the middle of the bed with his phone in his hand, looking shellshocked. He blinked, and looked at Rodney. “Yeah, um.” He swallowed hard. “Yeah.” He pushed to his feet and left the room, walking unsteadily. Rodney watched him go, feeling guilty for checking him out, but he’d never seen him naked in good light before and God he was perfect, apart from the slightly grungy bandage— long, lean limbs, firm swells of muscle, a pert little ass. 

Rodney’s guilt compounded itself when he heard John dry-heaving painfully in the bathroom. He didn’t think John was sick. He hadn’t eaten anything all night, so if he did suddenly have an intestinal adhesion there wasn’t anything to come back up yet. It was probably that John was upset, and that was worrying.  But Rodney knew what it was like to have a family that caused more pain than happiness. He was kind of an expert on it. It didn’t mean he knew what to do, but at least it meant he wasn’t particularly surprised. 

He waited until John stopped actively dry-heaving, then went in with a glass of water and the pain pill. John was sitting hunched on the bathmat with his back against the tub and his knees pulled up, looking absolutely fucking miserable. Cosmo had crept in and was staring fixedly at him from behind the sink pedestal next to her litter box, tail twitching suspiciously.

“Can you keep this down?” Rodney asked quietly. 

John took the glass of water and drank hesitantly. “Probably,” he said. Rodney waited, and after a moment he held his hand out for the pill and swallowed it, visibly pulling himself together. By the time he held out his hand for Rodney to help him up, he looked way more composed than a guy naked on a bathroom floor had any right to. 

John went back into the bedroom and, moving slowly and painfully, dressed himself. Rodney remembered a little belatedly not to hover, and went in the kitchen to make coffee and toast. Cosmo came out from her hiding place in the bathroom and twined around Rodney’s legs until he fed her, whereupon she wolfed down her food and disappeared, contented.

John came in after a few minutes and stepped up close behind him, slipping an arm around his waist and resting his stubbly cheek against the back of Rodney’s neck. 

“Hey,” John said softly.

“Hey,” Rodney said, pleased but a little shy. It felt strange to be casually affectionate like this. Nobody really ever was, with Rodney— people didn’t touch him, much, especially now that he didn’t get out much and had no friends. It sounded bad when he thought of it that way. 

“So, um,” John said, keeping his face pressed against the nape of Rodney’s neck. “How much of that did you hear?”

“Almost all of it,” Rodney said. “I’m sorry, I was kind of— it didn’t even occur to me to get out of the bed, I’m not at my brightest when I first wake up.”

“No,” John said, “that’s fine, it saves me having to repeat it for you.” He breathed in, breathed out carefully, and it occurred to Rodney that some of John’s tense posture was because he was probably in pretty bad pain. “So the thing is, if we’re— if we’re gonna do, you know, _this_ … you should probably know that um.” He breathed out a warm wash of air across Rodney’s shoulder. “I’m pretty screwed-up, and my family’s batshit insane.”

Rodney closed his eyes, huffing out a quiet laugh. “Sheppard, have I even mentioned my family one time? No, I have not, and for good reason. I’m not in any position to judge.” John loosened his grip a little, and Rodney turned around, pressing his backside against the counter and putting his arms around John’s waist. “I might also point out that I’m not exactly a bastion of normal mental functioning, myself. Genius, yes; well-adjusted, no.”

John leaned forward and rested his face in the crook of Rodney’s neck. “I dunno,” he said, “I’m probably crazier.”

“I think I have an idea,” Rodney said gently, pressing his lips briefly against John’s forehead. “I was there for the incoherent middle-of-the-night screaming, you recall, and the utter fiasco of our colliding neuroses when we attempted to hook up the first time. I should mention that my medicine cabinet is pretty formidable, and that’s all just stuff to keep me basically functioning. I’m really not intimidated by a little bit of family drama.”

Rodney could feel John smiling, though the other man didn’t raise his head. “Well,” he said, “you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I think I kind of knew what I was getting into, here,” Rodney said, “given that the only reason I got a second chance with you at all is that you got shot and _took a tax_ i home.”

“Hey now,” John said, but when he raised his head it was only to lean forward and kiss Rodney. It was a fairly hot kiss, open-mouthed and deep, but lazy, and it didn’t really go anywhere. John pulled back finally and went to get cups when the coffeemaker finished gurgling. 

“So is Nancy bringing Joey over later, then?” Rodney asked. “I can, um,” and he hooked his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the door. “I don’t need to get in the middle of your business.”

John looked up from pouring coffee, mouth a tight line. “I don’t know,” he said. “I kind of just yelled at her to get him out of there.”

Rodney made a face. “Is your dad likely to hurt him?”

John gave him an odd look, then turned away to the refrigerator for the cream. “No,” he said finally, “that’s not it at all. It’s…” He sighed. “It’s complicated, but the main thing you have to understand is that Patrick Sheppard doesn’t ever do anything without keeping a tally somewhere. He’s the nicest man in the world when you’re doing what he wants you to do, but if you step out of line, he will bring the hammer down so hard and so fast you won’t even know your own name afterward. No one has ever put one over on on the old man, or gotten away with anything he didn’t want them to. It’s easy to forget, but nothing, absolutely nothing, he does is out of the kindness of his heart. Everything has a cost, and it’s not a question of _if_ he’ll come to collect it, but _when_.”

“My dad was kinda controlling,” Rodney said, “before he became an alcoholic.”

John’s expression softened. “My mom drank a lot,” he said. “It’s not what killed her, directly, but it didn’t help. I’m sorry, Rodney, that sucks.”

“He drove his car into a tree,” Rodney said. “About ten years ago. Drunk as a skunk. At least he didn’t take anyone else out with him. I didn’t go to the funeral, he’d kind of gotten on my bad side by trying to sell my sister and I to the government for our brains.”

John stirred both coffees, and put the spoon into the sink. He still wasn’t moving fluidly, but Rodney could pretty much watch the painkiller as it dissolved into his system and unlocked parts of him from stiff immobility. “One of these days you’ll have to demonstrate your giant genius brain for me,” John said, giving Rodney a sidelong grin. 

“I cut your heating bill by 30%,” Rodney said. 

John stared at him blankly. “Wh— I _noticed_ that. What the hell did you do?”

“I re-engineered the furnace,” Rodney said. “I spent two days on it in early January when I was feeling pretty depressed and useless. It made me feel better.”

“Well,” John said, and handed him one of the coffee cups. “Shit. Thanks.” He took a sip of his own coffee, thinking a moment, then said, eyes narrowed slightly, “Did you do something to my car?”

“I was really depressed,” Rodney said. “And the noise was bugging me. I fixed your fan belt.”

“I _thought_ that was weird,” John said. 

Rodney got out the plates and the butter and pressed the button on the toaster again, since the bread had gone cold. John’s toaster was kind of wimpy anyway and always needed two passes to get the bread anything like crunchy. “Well,” he said. “Here you are trying to tell me you’re nuts, and I’m the crazy weirdo who does guerilla repair projects.”

John, to his relief, laughed. “I guess I can’t be too worried,” he said. 

“You really shouldn’t be,” Rodney said. 

John nodded, holding his mug between both hands and turning it. He’d gone serious again already but his body was loose enough to indicate that he wasn’t in such bad pain anymore. “So stick around,” he said. “I mean, later. If you’re not doing anything else. I want you to meet Joey and I want you to be here when Nancy’s here. If nothing else, you being a witness will keep me from flying off the handle.”

“I doubt that,” Rodney said, and at John’s slightly wounded look, added, “I heard you on the phone. If I were you I would’ve screamed at her, and instead you just reeled yourself in and said you were _sorry_. That was probably the most insane thing I’ve heard you do, Sheppard. Don’t you ever lose your temper?”

“No, I generally don’t,” John said quietly, and used the knife to deftly hook the toast out onto two plates and butter it. “You forget,” he added in a moment, “I’ve been in some wars. I’ve killed people, Rodney. I’ve been interrogated under torture. It tends to keep the mundane stuff in perspective.”

Rodney blinked at him, and John gave him a disconcertingly cool, flat look, then handed him a plate with a piece of buttered toast on it, and took his own plate and coffee cup and went into the living room. Rodney followed, after a moment, surprised at how hard it was for him to think of John as a killer. 

 

 

John’s phone rang and he pulled it out of his hoodie pocket and answered it one-handed without putting his coffee cup down. “Sheppard,” he said, which seemed redundant, but Rodney supposed it was long, pre-caller-ID habit. 

“Let me talk to him,” John said, frowning.

Rodney couldn’t hear the answer, but he made a wild guess that it was probably John’s ex-wife calling back.

“No,” John said, “I’m fine, let me talk to him for a minute and then I want to talk to you again.” There was a moment, then, “Hey, buddy,” John said, and his voice went from clipped and cool to warm and expansive, a grin spreading across his face. “Don’t cry, buddy, I’m okay,” he said, features shifting into concern. It was fascinating, how much emotion showed on his face when he was talking to his son. It only highlighted how controlled his expressions were the rest of the time— his normal air of faintly amused detachment was much more obviously a facade when contrasted to this openness. “I got hurt by that bad man, and the other police were too scared to stop him because he had a gun, but he wasn’t very good at it, so I got away and stopped him myself.”

Rodney watched John’s expression shift as he listened to the response. Rodney could hear a faint hint of voice, high-pitched like a child, coming from the phone receiver.

“I wouldn’t say that,” John said, a little bit amused and indulgent. “I don’t always. But I had my gun with me then, because I was coming home from work. I could have shot him before he pulled his gun out, but I wasn’t sure he really had one and I didn’t want to kill him. I still wouldn’t want to kill him! Even a bad man deserves a trial and jail instead of getting killed.”

The child answered, sounding indignant, Rodney rather fancied. It wasn’t hard to imagine what he was saying.

“Yes, he did,” John said, “and I’m pretty mad about that. But it’s okay. I just need a little time to heal and then I’m gonna have to be careful about getting sick, because the bullet broke one of my organs and they couldn’t fix it back the way it was, but I can still do everything I did before. It’s just going to hurt for a little while.”

Rodney had caught on about that. A bunch of his Google search history now was about what a spleen was for and if you could really be okay without one. John was more likely to die of pneumonia and less able to respond well to hypovolemic shock, but apart from that, would probably lead a normal life and have a normal lifespan. Rodney had begun to cultivate paranoia about respiratory infections and bacteria, hence the cooperation with John’s cleaning spree. He was already a member of two forums belonging to people with compromised immune systems. Most of the other members were parents of the affected subjects, so he was still just lurking. 

“Just one of ‘em,” John answered with a small laugh. “I’m gonna be fine, baby. Don’t worry about it. I can’t wait to see you. You know I was almost more upset about not getting to see you this weekend than I was about the actual getting shot part. I woke up in the hospital and kept asking the nurse what time it was and telling her I couldn’t be late to get you.”

Rodney had rinsed all of the dishes with boiling water before drying them and putting them away, and had sanitized the kitchen counters. He’d begun researching household steam-cleaning apparatus as well, since the forums said those were the absolute best at killing germs without introducing excessive chemicals into the home environment, but in the meantime resolved to use more Lysol in the bathroom, especially if John was going to be spending any more time on the floor in there.

“I know,” John said. “Ms. Rachel was sad too. You know, she was so nice to me when I got shot. She was there and she held my hand while we waited for the ambulance, so I wouldn’t be scared.”

“Really?” Rodney said. He couldn’t help himself. John laughed and glanced over at him. 

“Yes really,” John said, “although I think actually it was because I was so damned mad.” He paused, listening, then laughed. “No, I was mad at my coworker who startled him so he pulled the trigger. That was so dumb. I’ll make a fuss about it later. So, Joey, I’m gonna see you in like an hour and a half, right?”

The child responded. John was smiling at nothing, as if the kid could see him. It was sort of sweet to see his expression. “So can you hand me back to your mother? I wanna talk to her by herself for a minute. We got really mad at each other this weekend because we didn’t talk things over enough, so I want to straighten all that out with her, okay?”

Rodney wished grown-ups had talked to him like that when he was a kid. Even if he’d still known he was smarter than them, he might not have written them all off as quite so full of shit as he had. 

“I might need to use swear words,” John said. “It’s probably better you don’t hear it. And then I’ll have the upper hand, because I can use swears without you hearing, and she can’t.” He laughed. “I know, right, buddy? It’ll be great. So give me back to her and then when you come I promise I’ll teach you more awesome words that sound like swears but aren’t.”

Rodney laughed. He really, really wished there had been someone who’d talked to him like that when he was a kid. They’d all been so goddamned condescending, and nobody had been able to understand what to do with a really sharp-witted kid, and had fallen back on cruelty to keep him in his place, or excessive coolness to keep him distracted. And neither had really worked. 

“All right, listen up,” John said, his voice going sharp and cold. “This is the intro course on Patrick Sheppard. This is all the shit I never told you because I figured you didn’t need to know. But if he’s trying to get his hooks into his grandson, you need to be forearmed with this.”

It was disconcerting, the abrupt transformation. Gone was all warmth, all playfulness, all fond indulgence, replaced completely with a cold single-minded intensity.

John paused for a long moment. “If you’re going to take his side, I am going to take you to court over custody of Joey, just so you know,” he said, and he was so grim he sounded like an entirely different person. “Nancy, you were with me ten years and he’s convinced you I’m a liar? Doesn’t that make you a little worried? He’s fucking dangerous, Nancy, and I’m not fucking around.”

Rodney’s vague notion that John’s dad had sort of been like his evaporated.

“Don’t tell me to calm down,” John said, and the absurdity of it struck Rodney suddenly; John was deadly calm, his voice almost perfectly level. “You listen to what I’m going to tell you, and then you ask yourself if I’m overreacting, okay?” 

Whatever the reply was, it was brief.

“Patrick Sheppard’s number one priority is control,” John said. “He views the world in terms of what kind of leverage he can exert, and who has power in any given situation. I’m not saying he doesn’t love people, but it’s conditional. You have to constantly earn it. Don’t interrupt me, let me finish, and then we can debate this. Okay?” He scrubbed his hand across the back of his neck. 

“So Patrick gets control of people, that’s what he does,” he went on. “The primary way he does this is by giving you things. Sometimes they’re really extravagant things. A show horse, for example. And you get really attached to these things, say, maybe you become a world-class athlete, first in the world at three-day eventing in the under-16 category, maybe. And you love that horse, it’s your closest friend in the world, and riding’s the only thing you’re good at, but boy, you’re really good at it. You’re in magazines and things, you’re poised to move up to the next level of competition. And say, around that same time, you’re the age where you’re applying to college, and Patrick wants you to go early decision to Yale. But Yale doesn’t offer the degree program you want. You want to apply to Stanford. Your advisor thinks you should apply to Stanford. So you apply to Stanford along with Yale and don’t do early decision. And you come home from school the next day and your show horse is gone. He’s been sold. You’re not ever going to compete again. You were the best in the world for your age, in the top ten best in the world regardless of your age, and that’s it. You defied Patrick on this matter, you dared to do other than commanded, and now your best friend is gone and you will never compete again. That’s it, that’s final, no appeals, no takebacks.”

There was a moment of blank silence. No, John’s dad really hadn’t been anything like Rodney’s.

“I know,” John said. “You think, that was a long time ago. And things are always more dramatic when you’re a teenager. He’s not like that anymore. I know you are thinking this because it only makes sense. But now imagine years have gone by, years after he disowned you and you almost fucking starved trying to get yourself through college, and now you’re making peace. Imagine he gives you a house for your wedding gift. It’s an extravagant gift, yeah, but surely, for a man so wealthy, it’s nothing? Perhaps he’s making up for your years of estrangement. You would think that, and you would be wrong. So years go by, and you get a divorce, because these things happen, people change, situations change. And he calls you, and he says Johnny boy, you know, it’s etiquette when a marriage breaks up so quickly that you give back the wedding presents. And you say, that’s ridiculous, it’s been seven years. And he says no, six and a half. I was going to sign the deed over to you at seven, Johnny boy, but you didn’t make it.”

Rodney blinked in shock. Okay, that was not what he’d expected at all, when he’d noticed John’s weird crack about his mortgage. He’d figured it was some weird term of the divorce, and had resolved not to ask.

“Oh,” John said, “I’m serious. I said, Dad, you can’t throw my son out on the street, and he said oh I wouldn’t do that, I’ll sell it to you for fair market price. So I gave him everything I had, Nancy, all my demob pay, all the saved-up hazard pay, you know, all my blood money, my retirement, everything I could scrape together, as a down payment. I know, the man’s worth about seven hundred million dollars in cash, closer to a billion if you factor in the non-liquid assets and so on, it seems kinda petty, but what can you do? He’s got the deed to the house. Yeah, look in the lockbox when you get home, it’s not in there, is it? I know. I was a little surprised too, but then, I wasn’t exactly around when we moved in, so I didn’t really see what went down.” 

He listened for a moment, then smiled thinly. “I give him almost two thousand dollars a month to pay that mortgage down, Nancy. The March check just cleared, I can show you the bank statement. He charges interest and late fees, though there’s no penalty if I pay extra or early. It’s more than half my income after taxes, so the only way I can really afford to do that and also eat food is if I work as much overtime as I can get. The best overtime shifts are on the weekends. If I work three a month, I can swing groceries. If I drop one of those weekends, it’s a lot tighter, but what’s worse is that if you turn down shifts, people stop offering them and pretty soon you’re back down to your base salary. So I’ve been wrestling with that this year, trying to make more time for my kid, who’s the one I’m doing all of this for, without losing so much income that I start incurring late fees. Because once I fall behind on those, I’ll never catch up. I dunno what I’m gonna do now that I’m hurt, but I’ll have to worry about that once I can get around a little better.”

Rodney remembered John’s pained worry about the disability insurance, and made a mental note to check his bank balance. He didn’t keep a lot in checking, but he could probably float John for a mortgage payment. Shit, if he transferred from savings he could probably pay off the rest of the loan, and while maybe it was kind of early in the relationship to think that way, it was also fucking ridiculous for John to be trapped like this.

“Because you can’t afford it either,” John said. “And it’s fine, it’s my dad, I’ll deal with his shit, it is what it is. But the last thing I need is for him to start finding ways to get control over Joey. He let him ride ponies, right? Watched movies in the home theater? Probably gave him some pretty cool toys to play with? That’s how it starts, and it feels perfectly normal, the kind of thing a grandpa would do with his grandson. But nothing is ever without strings attached, Nancy. Nothing.”

John would probably be touchy about it, and would almost certainly insist on repaying him, but Rodney bet their relationship could survive something like that. He was kind of terrible at betting and worse at relationships but he was sort of feeling lucky.

“Don’t feel bad,” John said. “You couldn’t possibly know.”

Maybe he could get John to repay him in sexual favors and footrubs and the like. That could be fun. But, well, accidentally calling John a whore was one thing, hitting him up for tens of thousands of dollars worth of sexual favors was probably quite another. Rodney filed the idea away for later consideration.

“Don’t think that way either,” John said. “If we had made it to seven years, he’d’ve come up with something else. That’s the thing I learned. It doesn’t really matter what you do, you can’t actually win the games he plays, except by total submission, and that’s not really winning, is it?”

The sun had crawled across the room and was lighting John from behind, picking out red highlights in his dark hair, and he was probably the most beautiful thing Rodney had ever seen, and now Rodney couldn’t stop thinking about wanting to get him out of reach of all the things in the world that seemed only to want to hurt him. 

“So I’m not saying we should cut him out of Joey’s life,” John said. “I’m not saying that at all. I’m not saying Patrick has no right to ever see his grandson. I don’t want Joey to hear any of this stuff because I don’t want to poison their relationship. But I’m saying, you need to watch your fucking step. Don’t accept something you can’t give back on a moment’s notice, without regret. And I don’t ever want Joey left alone with him. Someone has to be there. Because while Patrick does most of his controlling through material goods, there’s other shit too, words and psychological shit, and physical shit, and I earned some broken bones in his house, and I don’t ever, ever, ever want Joey to experience that kind of thing. Not at the hands of somebody who’s supposed to love him.”

John shouldn’t ever experience that either, Rodney thought fiercely, and was kind of surprised at himself. He’d sort of figured his protective instinct had died when he’d ruthlessly cut it off from his sister. But apparently not. 

“Because you didn’t need to know,” John said. “When it was just me, I didn’t need to throw a pity party. What does it matter if my dad broke my nose when I was thirteen? It got better, mostly, and I learned my lesson. You don’t need to learn it too. And I don’t ever want Joey to learn it. That’s what I’m getting at, here.”

Rodney stared at him, stricken. Yes, now that he looked, John’s fine, straight nose had a slight bump to it, a little bit of an imperfection. 

“So chew on that a little,” John said. “I gotta go clean up before you get here, I smell like an animal and look like a wild man.” He rubbed his face. “Yeah, okay.” His expression softened. “Yeah, I’m gonna see you real soon. Okay, buddy? You wanna hang up the phone? You know where the button is? Okay, I love you, bye now!” He laughed. “No, really, bye! Try again— the red button. Okay!”

He ended the call and looked down at the phone in his hand for a moment, every line of his body conveying exhaustion. “That sucked,” he said, and looked up at Rodney. 

“Yeah,” Rodney said, and came over to stand next to John. He held out his hands. “Want help in the shower?”

John looked up at him, biting his lip uncertainly. He looked so tired, so beaten-down, Rodney just wanted to make that go away. “I’m, um,” he said, and his eyes darted away, “not, um. Probably not gonna do you much good.”

Rodney blinked at him. “At showering?” he asked. 

“Um,” John said. “At messin’ around.” He glanced up at Rodney, then away. 

“Oh,” Rodney said, a little blankly, then remembered some of his reading about wound aftercare. He pieced that together with certain details of the previous night’s entertainment, and it became suddenly clear. “Oh! Uh, I— I know, and that’s okay. That’s not— It’s not what I meant, precisely. I mean, sort of, but. I’m not judging. You’re down a spleen and probably a fair portion of your blood volume, I’m not exactly expecting— I just meant, like, being naked and wet. It’s not like we have forever, anyway. I’m not going to meet your ex-wife wearing nothing but a towel and a smug grin.”

John’s face eased into an expression of relieved amusement. “I bet she’d like that,” he said. 


	10. Coffee Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John lets Rodney give him stupid facial hair. This is not plot-significant, it's just entertaining.  
> Nancy and Joey show up. Rodney and Nancy have A Talk.  
> ****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this story’s kind of getting out of control, guys, and I’m writing it instead of sleeping and it’s kind of taken on its own direction. I need to start telling it faster, maybe! So there might be a spate of relatively close-spaced updates. I feel like I’m giving people too much homework when I do that. But I have a couple big plot points I want to get to and all this middle stuff is so I can get there.  
> I know, I know, this story is a really excellent example of the ways in which I need an editor. The pacing is all crazy and this is going to be the most ridiculously long thing if I get to all the plot points I want to get to. But worse are the continuity issues. How old Joey is, six or five. How many years ago John and Nancy got divorced, how long ago they got married; I’m aware that I’ve sort of made up random numbers at times. I have the timeline in my head but I also have a math learning disability (that’s a real thing, I promise, I know everybody’s bad at math but I really honestly have A Problem) so I sort of lose track a lot. I know too that early on I said John had custody of Joey two weekends a month, then later Nancy asked him if he’d take Joey… two weekends a month instead of one… yeah. I just, I don’t have a beta reader and I am so rabidly impatient to tell the story so I can find out how it ends (I don’t outline, it doesn’t work, so I have a bunch of big plot points and I’m uncovering the rest as I go) that I’m not going back and fixing them.  
> Anyway. I apologize if the editing issues throw anyone out of the story. And if anyone would like to work with me after this is done, maybe a beta exchange? I used to be in communities that had these sorts of things but they all died with Livejournal and I don’t know where any of them are anymore. Although, well, after this is done I’ll probably have yet another story I’m trying to tell, so… But anyway. I need an editor, I’m aware of that, I don’t have one, I apologize. 
> 
> While I’m authors-notesing, I’ll point out that chapter breaks are kind of random but I’m aiming for 5,000 words a chapter (and almost always missing)— is that too long, or too short, or what? I just seem to tell stories in that-length chunks.  
> ***

Rodney surreptitiously rinsed the already-spotless shower down with spray bleach cleanser while John was in the bedroom, and sanitized the sink too while he was at it. He put the exhaust fan on to vent the smell and came out to find John standing in the hallway. 

“You all right in there?” John asked, one eyebrow climbing his face quizzically.

“Yes,” Rodney said. “Oh, um, I should go get my towel and a change of clothes.”

“I have towels,” John said. “Worry about the clothes later.” He flipped up the corner of the towel he was holding, revealing that there were two, both relatively new and really fluffy. “Is it safe to go in there?” He nodded toward the bathroom. 

“Yes,” Rodney said a little loftily, “it is now.” He went in and stood a little awkwardly in the tight space as John hung the towels on the hooks and started carefully undressing. This was something Rodney was pretty good at, so he helped John out of his shirt. The bandage needed peeling off, and Rodney grimaced a little squeamishly as they got down to the final dressing. 

“Leave that on,” John said. “I can’t get it directly wet, so I’ll change it afterward.” The dressing was kind of gross and stained, mostly with disinfectant, though it had just been put on yesterday at the doctor’s. It was almost obscenely ugly against the beautiful lines of his torso, a harsh interruption of perfection.

“Want a shave?” Rodney asked. “Or I could at least clean up the edges and make it look deliberate.” There was a razor in a holder by the sink, and he looked in the medicine cabinet and found shaving cream in a tube.

John grimaced. “I’ve never purposely had a beard in my life,” he said. “Don’t know that I’d start now.”

“Goatee,” Rodney said. “This kind of thing is the best time to do stunt facial hair. I figured I would when I moved here,what with not having to go into the office or to meetings or anything, but I haven’t gotten around to it.”

“Stunt facial hair,” John said, both eyebrows getting into it as he untied the drawstring of his pyjama pants.

“Oh yeah,” Rodney said. “Mutton chop sideburns, Fu Manchu moustaches, Isembard Kingdom Brunel beards— well, okay, those take years of commitment, but you get my drift.”

“I’m not growing a Fu Manchu,” John said.

“Mutton chops, then,” Rodney said. “And a handlebar.”

“I don’t have enough facial hair for a handlebar yet,” John said, “and what’s more, I’m _not_ growin’ one, so forget it.”

“Can we at least do a pornstache?” Rodney asked. 

John finally laughed, then, and even the brief monosyllabic outburst was a tiny victory in Rodney’s book. “A pornstache,” he said. “You think that’d look good?”

“Anything would look good on you,” Rodney said loyally, then consciously reeled in the cheesiness and wrecked it with, “or at least, it’d be really funny.”

John laughed again, looser this time, and some of the tightness of his whole frame faded away. “I live to amuse,” he said. 

“I vote for a goatee,” Rodney said. “And then you can try to convince Joey you’re your own evil twin.” 

“Evil Sheppard,” John said. “Brr, I can’t imagine there being two of me. That would probably be the worst thing ever.”

“It’d be hot,” Rodney protested. He considered it for a moment, letting his eyes go slightly unfocused and pasting a slightly-dopey leer on his face. He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. 

“If evil me still has a spleen, I’ll fight him for it,” John said wryly, looking down at his wound dressing. 

“I pretty much wouldn’t care about anything except having a threesome with the both of you,” Rodney said. “That would be so hot.”

“I don’t think I’d be down for a threesome with myself,” John said, pulling a disgusted face. “Not even with you as the creamy filling.”

Rodney snickered and repeated _creamy filling_ under his breath in the most juvenile manner he could muster, then said, “What, not even if the bread didn’t touch?”

“In the Rodney sandwich?” John squinted speculatively. “Ehh… tempting, but… I dunno, Rodney, I’m pretty novice at this gay stuff, I think asking me to have an entirely gay threesome _with myself_ is kind of ambitious even if you’re the bait.”

Rodney set the razor and tube of shaving cream on the edge of the tub and bent to look at the temperature controls. John shed his pants and gently steered him out of the way to turn the hot water on, then looked Rodney up and down. “You just gonna watch, then, or are you gettin’ naked?”

Rodney hesitated a second, then pulled his shirt off. “It’s,” he said, “I don’t look as good naked as you do.”

“Bullshit,” John said. He stepped into Rodney’s space and bent down to pull their mouths together, closing his eyes in a surprisingly sweet flutter of eyelashes. Rodney tipped his head back, letting John suck on his lower lip. John’s hand came up and cradled Rodney’s jaw, and his fingers were freezing but Rodney didn’t flinch… much. 

John laughed at Rodney’s poorly-concealed recoil. “Come on,” he said, letting go, and stepped into the shower, angling himself carefully into the spray to spare his injured side getting wet. Rodney stepped out of his pants and got in too. 

He kissed John for a while, and used the excuse of soap to rub slippery hands all over John’s body. He got mildly turned on but not unduly so, and was a little proud of himself for not being ridiculous about it. John was slightly twitchy at the contact and attention, but seemed despite that to like it. He was a little unsteady, though, so eventually they wound up sitting on the floor of the shower with several inches of water in the tub while Rodney knelt behind John and washed his hair, rinsing carefully with the sprayer. John kept his eyes shut and tilted his head wherever Rodney positioned it. He had a lot of hair; it sort of wasn’t fair, Rodney commented as he scrubbed his fingers through it for a second shampooing (it had been pretty greasy). 

John laughed again, and tilted his head obediently for the second rinse. Every time John laughed Rodney felt like something broken was knitting itself back together. Maybe not for John, but for Rodney it was, and that was something. 

“Man it feels good to be clean,” John said, and Rodney leaned in and kissed the nape of his neck. 

“You’re getting pruney,” Rodney said. “Let’s get you out of here.”

John tipped his head sideways and grinned back at Rodney. “I guess we shouldn’t still be in the shower together when my kid shows up.” But something about the thought of it— whether at the thought of the ongoing drama with his kid, or at the thought of explaining homosexuality to his kid, or what (and not knowing which made Rodney nervous)— dimmed the light behind his eyes a little bit, recalled some of the tightness into his jaw and shoulders, and he dropped his gaze and reached over to unplug the tub drain.

Rodney stood, helping John up carefully, and rinsed the last of the soap off both of them, careful of John’s bandage. Despite their care, it was pretty wet. Rodney grimaced, and helped John get out of the tub. Maybe John wouldn’t want to admit to a relationship with Rodney. He wouldn’t be the first. But he would probably be the one it would be most worth it to suck up and keep quiet for. 

John peeled the dressing off gingerly, revealing a jagged mess of stitches. Rodney knew there had been staples that they’d removed recently, but didn’t really want to consider that too deeply. He distracted himself by wrapping the rest of John in a towel as John re-bandaged the wound, then helped wind the bandage around John’s body to hold it in place. 

His torso was seamed with scars in other places, that spoke of hard living and older wounds. Rodney tucked the towel around his waist and tipped his head up, and was rewarded with the hoped-for kiss, a gentle and searching one. He pushed his luck and got in a grope of John’s ass, and John laughed. 

“You’re an optimist,” he said. 

“C’mon, mountain man,” Rodney said by way of answer. “What do you want with this beard? Soul patch? Mutton chops? Goatee?”

“Hmm,” John said, frowning exaggeratedly, eyebrows raised. Rodney picked up the razor and the tube of shaving cream and waved them. “Goatee. Let’s do it. See what it looks like.”

“I like it,” Rodney said. “I like it.” He gestured at the closed lid of the toilet. “Siddown. I’ll do this up right.” 

Some minutes later John looked in the mirror and said, “Jesus Christ get that thing off my face.”

“No no,” Rodney said, “it’s great. At least scare Nancy with it.”

“It’s gonna make Joey cry, is what it’s gonna do,” John said. “Shit, what time is it?”

“I really should go put pants on,” Rodney said. He was just wearing a towel. And it was a lovely, fluffy towel, but it was a towel.

“Fine,” John said, “fine, I’ll keep the dead animal on my chin for now. Sheesh.”

 

 

Rodney was still dithering between clever t-shirts when he heard the car pull in the driveway. He didn’t really register it— cars went by all the time, and some pulled in for the building next door— until he heard Nancy’s voice. He hastily pulled on his less-clever but more-flattering option (a faux-vintage X-Men t-shirt featuring comic-book Wolverine) and went to the window. She was kneeling at the foot of the stairs with Joey, who looked sulky and tear-stained. Rodney couldn’t hear what she said, but Joey said loudly, “No!” and tore away, running up the stairs to the door.

Rodney went and let him in— John was probably up to a trip down the stairs by now, but he wasn’t going to put him to the test. Joey was staring up eagerly as the door opened— ready, Rodney realized, to leap on his father, and when the door revealed Rodney, Joey hesitated, stricken with indecision. 

“Hey,” Rodney said, “I’m Rodney, you must be Joey.”

Joey wavered, eyes wide and tragic, and Rodney reflected with some regret that this was a pretty catastrophic setback in Joey’s tiny world, and he’d probably been crying most of the way here, so springing a surprise like this on him, the terrible injustice of not being the expected and longed-for person to open this door, was pretty mean. 

“Go on,” Rodney said, waving toward the stairs, “go up, he’s waiting up there, it hurts him to walk too far.”

Joey regarded him hesitantly, vibrating with poorly-repressed emotion and a jumble of small-child impulses. A quick glance back at his mother, and he took off like a shot through the hallway with an audible sob. Rodney craned his head after him, and heard the upstairs door open and John’s voice calling out a question. 

“Daddy,” Joey sobbed, and John’s voice floated down, soft and reassuring. 

Rodney waved Nancy in and shut the door, stepping back into the hallway to look up. Joey’s voice was audible, words indistinct, and John was answering him repetitively. Rodney grimaced at Nancy. 

“I didn’t mean to surprise him like that,” he said. “In retrospect that was sort of mean. But I really didn’t think about it. I bet he’s had a rough morning.”

“Oh,” Nancy said wearily, “he has.” She shook her head. “I saw the clip from the news— did you?” Rodney indicated that he hadn’t. “It’s pretty damn gory, I can’t believe they put it on regular TV. I mean, it’s not like guts or anything, but there’s just, there’s blood everywhere, like the cameraman lovingly panned over the splatters. It was so gross. Even if it hadn’t been his father, Joey would have been upset by seeing that.”

“That’s not right,” Rodney said. 

“Oh,” Nancy said, pausing, “hi, I’m Nancy Callahan.” She held out her hand. 

Rodney didn’t know why he was surprised she’d reverted to her name, but for some reason it seemed weird. “Rodney McKay,” he said. “Dr. Rodney McKay.” He shook her hand firmly. He’d seen her before, through the window, but she was really, really hot, he had to admit, and hotter up close. 

She looked him up and down for a moment. “He mentioned you, then said he wasn’t speaking to you,” she said, devastatingly casual as she turned and walked up the stairs. 

“I found him passed out right about here,” Rodney said, equally cold, and pointed at the base of the stairs. “With a dead phone and nobody to call anyway. So I got him up the stairs, and in return he gave me a chance to explain the extremely boneheaded thing I’d said that he’d misunderstood, and we’ve been on pretty good footing ever since.”

Nancy flinched a little at the nobody to call line, as Rodney had intended— academia had developed his conversational acumen, and Siberia’s intense, blood-sport politics had honed it to a pretty deadly edge, but he was out of practice lately. “Pretty good footing, hmm?” she purred, recovering admirably. “Is that what they’re calling it these days.” 

That sounded an awful lot like John had told her about them. Though part of the current drama was that she hadn’t spoken to him since before he got shot. Which meant John had told her about the abortive one-night-stand situation. Which, okay, Rodney couldn’t really blame her for being a little frosty, if that was the most recent thing she knew about him. But damn. Okay. John told his ex-wife a lot. There wasn’t anyone in the entire world Rodney had told about John. 

But then, there wasn’t anyone in the entire world Rodney had a current relationship with of any particular depth or significance.

They were at the top of the stairs now, and just inside the apartment door John was still sitting on the floor with his arms wrapped around Joey’s entire body. Joey had his face in his father’s neck and was still hitching a little bit with the aftermath of sobs. 

“John,” Nancy said, forgetting about Rodney, and John looked up over Joey’s shoulder. “I am—“

“I know,” he said, shaking his head. His eyes were suspiciously shiny, though he looked more irritated than anything else. “I get it. Help me up.”

Nancy pulled Joey gently away, and Rodney got John to his feet and steadied him. “Are you all right?” Nancy asked. Joey pulled free of her and went back to wrap himself around John’s leg. 

“Getting better,” he said. “I can’t pick you up yet, though, baby,” he said to Joey, ruffling his hair. “I’d pop my stitches.”

Joey mutely shoved his face against the outside of John’s thigh. “He’s been very upset,” Nancy said quietly. She bit her lip, shifting her weight, and finally added, “Your, your father sends his regards and hopes you’re not hurt too badly.”

John smiled tightly, falsely. “Nice of him,” he said. “Appreciate it.” He waved toward the coffeemaker. “Coffee?”

“If you’ve got some,” Nancy said. 

“Yeah,” John said, and made an abortive move toward the coffeemaker. 

“Go,” Rodney said, “sit on the couch and hold that boy properly before he melts. I’ll make coffee.”

John laughed, though it was a brittle one. “ _I_ might melt,” he said, and wrangled Joey through the living room door. Nancy stood watching them, then turned back to look at Rodney as he made a pot of coffee. 

“We’ve got toast, yogurt, English muffins and jelly, oatmeal, cold cereal, though there’s only whole milk, it’s been kind of a challenge getting enough calories into John,” Rodney said. “Or, um…”

“I’m not hungry,” Nancy said. “Thanks.” She was standing in the middle of the room with her arms wrapped around herself, looking through the door, but Rodney knew that from here you couldn’t see anyone sitting on the couch. 

“The beard thing is temporary,” Rodney said, casting about for something to say that wasn’t asinine. 

“How long was he in the hospital?” Nancy asked, half-turning her head. 

Rodney shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “It was a pretty serious injury.”

“He’s improving, though,” she said, turning her body to follow her head and face Rodney full-on. It was a question. She didn’t look arch anymore, wasn’t cool or collected now. 

“Oh,” Rodney said, “yes, he’s mostly onto solid food and he can keep more of it down, and the pain’s eased enough that he can move around a little bit. Those first two days or so were really awful, he was barely coherent. I actually— I work from home, so I brought my computer up here to work, because I was afraid to leave him unattended even for a few minutes. I really thought he was going to die.”

She nodded, her beautiful face a little pinched and drawn in on itself with guilt, and stood a moment in silence, staring absently toward the living room again. There was no sound from the other room; whatever John and Joey were saying to one another, they weren’t saying it out loud. 

Rodney spared about a quarter of a second to be jealous; his own father had never loved him like that. But it passed; from what he’d seen of John’s face, there weren’t a lot of people who loved other people the way John loved his kid. “He’s okay now, though,” Rodney went on, speaking slowly as his mind kept working at that thought. If John had ever loved Nancy like that, how could she have let him go? Or was it the other way around— had she been jealous because John loved Joey more? But that didn’t seem right. Rodney was willing to bet that John only had one setting for love, and it was all or nothing. But being the object of that kind of love might be a little intimidating. 

“He’s not okay,” Nancy said, “I can see that.” But her expression softened a little and she looked at Rodney. “Joey is furious with me for not calling John back earlier. And he’s in the right. My son is six years old and he’s right and I’m wrong. It’s a very odd position to be in.”

“John was pretty upset,” Rodney said. “He was in pretty miserable shape and it was kind of insult to injury. But for what it’s worth he refused to say anything bad about you, even when he was really low.”

Nancy looked away. “I swear I’m not a bad person,” she said. “I never mean it, but I have this incredible innate talent for hurting John Sheppard. It’s like I was created and put on this Earth just to cause yet more damage to that man. And it’s not fair, because it’s pretty much the opposite of what I actually want to do.” 

“I kind of get how that happens,” Rodney admitted after a moment’s contemplation. The coffeemaker gurgled and he went to get out mugs and cream and sugar. He paused, thinking that Joey probably didn’t want a cup of coffee. 

Nancy noticed his hesitation and said, “I’ll go see if Joey wants anything.” She moved to the doorway, starting to speak. “John, you want anything in your co— oh.” She stopped, then looked back over her shoulder at Rodney, her generous mouth twisting sweetly. 

Curious, Rodney came over and looked into the living room. Joey had fallen asleep curled into John’s chest, and John had nodded off with his cheek resting on top of Joey’s head and his arms wrapped around him. “Oh,” Rodney said very softly. It was ridiculously adorable. 

They went back into the kitchen, and Rodney poured two cups of coffee and they sat at the kitchen table. Nancy put her elbows on the table and propped her cheeks in her hands for a moment, before sighing and fixing her cup of coffee. Rodney made himself another piece of toast and sat down with it. 

“So, um,” Nancy said, looking intently into her cup. “You, um. And John.” She waved a hand. 

“Kinda?” Rodney said. 

She looked up at him keenly, assessingly. “You were in the room,” she said. “When I called. On the way here.”

Rodney nodded. She looked away, expression sliding through irritation fleetingly, then looked back, composed and with one eyebrow arched slightly. 

“So you have a leg up,” she said. “You now know more about John Sheppard, after dating him for what, a week?”

“Not even,” Rodney admitted. 

“Than I did after being with him the better part of a _decade_ ,” she finished, eyes narrowed. “I ask you, how can I avoid doing him terrible wrongs when he won’t even tell me basic things I need to know?”

Rodney shook his head. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” he said. 

“I do to me,” she said stubbornly, looking really distressed. She sighed. “It took everything I had not to turn the car right back around and go confront Patrick Sheppard. But I know from long painful experience that any time I try to do something to defend John, I only end up making it worse for him.”

“That’s incredibly shitty about the house,” Rodney said. “But I sort of can’t believe he didn’t mention it to you.”

“Exactly,” Nancy said, gesturing sharply with one hand. “ _Thank_ you. Because no, I couldn’t afford two thousand dollars a month either, but Jesus Christ, real estate is so cheap around here, I could easily find an apartment I _could_ afford in a place with a reasonable school district. Probably not as nice as where we are now but Joey’s hardly going to get involved in gangs in first grade.”

Rodney nodded. “Well,” he said. “I got up to some pretty crazy things in first grade.”

“Gangs?” Nancy asked, raising one eyebrow.

“In Fort McMurray? Ha ha _no_.” Rodney wrapped his fingers around his coffee mug. “But— well, you might not know this but I’m an actual certified genius. And they’d kind of started to suspect by kindergarten, and by first grade they’d done all their tests, and…” He trailed off. “But no, not gangs.”

“They wanted to do an IQ test on Joey,” Nancy said. “Really? He’s fucking _six_. Let him be. Then they wanted to drug him for ADD. Again, really? Have I mentioned he’s a six-year-old boy? Of course he can’t sit fucking still. That’s why they invented recess. It’s like they don’t let kids have normal childhoods anymore.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Rodney said, and swallowed hard. 

Nancy gave him an assessing look. “Should I Google you?” she asked. 

Rodney laughed bitterly. “My entire career has been classified since about 1993,” he said, “so you won’t find much. Most of the people I went to college with assume I’m dead.”

She rotated the mug between her hands, fidgeting. “It’s becoming increasingly clear John didn’t have anything like a normal childhood either. Most of what he said today wasn’t exactly a surprise. You don’t have to be a psychiatrist to figure out that a man doesn’t get the way John is without having been pretty seriously abused as a child. I just… had always figured it was more indirect than that, and figured it wasn’t just his dad, it was probably all kinds of factors. I mean, the Sheppards are loaded, that’s pretty high-pressure. He had a nanny, went to a crazy prep school, probably had every poor-little-rich-boy bullshit thing that can ever happen to a person happen to him.” She circled her hand next to her face expansively, unhappily. “Figured it was his mom dying when he was thirteen, figured all kinds of stuff. And he never gave me anything to go on.”

“He’s not much for talking,” Rodney said. 

“Understatement of the century,” Nancy snorted. She looked down for a long moment, then looked up again keenly, snagging his gaze. “If he let you stay in the room when he took that phone call, then you and he are not _kinda_ , in his mind, Rodney.”

“Yes,” Rodney said. “Yes, I know, I— yes.” 

She watched him keenly for a moment. “Just so we’re clear,” she said. 

“I, um,” Rodney said, “I’m actually, um, pretty serious.”

“John’s never not,” Nancy said. She pushed to her feet, went to the door, and looked into the living room for a long moment, then came back and sat down, leaning over the table. “God. I feel like such a heel.” She rubbed her face tiredly. “I flipped out as badly as I did because I had plans with a new boyfriend this weekend, and I’m super-defensive that I’m moving on if he’s not, and I want him to move on but I’m all jealous about it. I’m a wreck and I’m handling it badly. And now I’ve gotten his father involved.”

“He’s not really mad at you,” Rodney said. “I don’t think, anyway. He hasn’t talked about it except on the phone.” 

“Yeah,” Nancy said, “he doesn’t talk about much.” She pushed restlessly away from the table again and paced around the kitchen. “I gotta make a phone call,” she said, pulling a cell phone out of her jeans pocket and looking at it. She grabbed her coat and went out into the hallway, and Rodney refilled his coffee cup and went into the living room. 

 


	11. 1:72 Scale Model

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nancy's pretty sure she's gonna kill Patrick Sheppard.  
> John would like being gay to involve more, y'know, gay sex.
> 
> Semi-warnings: description of past child abuse, on the bad side; on the good side, there's some dirty talk.

 

 

John woke up warm and suffused with a deep contentedness, comfortable with the heavy press of another body against his. For a brief disoriented moment he thought he was in bed with Rodney, before the world spun and righted itself and he correctly identified the hair against his cheek as Joey’s. 

Time had passed, and snow rattled against the windowpanes; the weather had shifted. He smelled food, and blinked blearily, orienting himself. Joey was deeply asleep, breathing slow and shallow into John’s shoulder. He was situated across John in such a way that he wasn’t putting any pressure on his injuries, which was a mercy; from the dull throb enough time must have passed that John’s pain meds were wearing off. 

He freed one hand and rubbed his face. “Hey, sleepyhead,” Nancy said quietly, and he blinked; she was on the couch next to him, feet curled under herself. 

“Hey,” he said. “How long was I out?”

“Like an hour,” she said. 

“Poor kid’s worn out,” John said. 

“He was so upset,” Nancy said. “And he was right. He saw me reject your call and kept begging me to check the voicemail and I was quite short with him over it. I told him I needed to cool off so I wasn’t angry with you, and I know we’ve taught him that before, and it really irritated me that he wouldn’t let it go and listen to me. And this whole time he was right.”

John shrugged one shoulder. “You didn’t know,” he said wryly. “It’s just that he and I have our mystic bond.”

She snorted quietly with a single syllable of laughter. “I forgot,” she said. It was an old joke, dating back to when infant Joey had gone through a colicky phase and only John had been able to settle him. 

“I’m not mad,” John said. He reached over and put his hand on hers, which was resting on her leg. “It’s all right, Nancy.”

“You should be mad,” she said. “I’m mad that you’re not mad. I’m mad that you never fucking told me about your father. If I don’t have good intel how can I make good choices?”

“I know,” John said, and looked down. “I’m sorry. I should have— but I was so— what can you even do?”

“I can call out Patrick Sheppard’s hypocritical bullshit,” Nancy said. “He wants to spend time with his grandson, he wants Joey to have every advantage, why is he doing something so petty and destructive? He’s taking you away from Joey, and Joey needs you more than he needs a big house or fancy toys or goddamn riding lessons or whatever.”

“Jesus,” John said, feeling a little sick, “riding lessons?”

“Of course Joey rode on horses,” Nancy said. “And of course he loved it.”

John nodded slowly. “He’s doing it precisely to get Joey away from me,” he said, quiet. “That’s his actual goal.”

“Why would he do that?” Nancy demanded. 

“Because he doesn’t think I’m capable,” John said. “Because he thinks I’ll only screw things up. Better I sort of fade out of the picture because I can’t hack it as a breadwinner than I abandon him, or die trying. Best entirely if I let him down a bunch of times starting when he’s really young, so that he’s the one who decides to pull away from me. Don’t think for a second Patrick isn’t doing this deliberately.”

“I wanted to turn right around and yell at him,” Nancy said, “but I restrained myself, because whenever I do that kind of thing I only make it worse for you.”

“Thank you,” John said dryly. 

“So I’ll follow your lead on this,” Nancy said, “but don’t think it’s going to keep on the way it has been. I’m not letting you buy me a goddamn fucking house, John.”

“It’s supposed to be yours anyway,” John said. “You got the house in the divorce, it was part of the terms.” 

“The terms were insane,” Nancy said. “You wouldn’t take anything. Believe me, you don’t owe me a house.”

“I fucked up your career,” John said. 

“Oh my God,” Nancy said, “you didn’t do anything. Stop.” 

“You never wanted kids,” John said. “And I—“

“Stop,” Nancy said, and actually put her other hand over his mouth. “Stop, John. I fucked up your career worse. The only things I ever regret are all the times I’ve hurt you. That’s all. So cut it out. My life is fine. We’ll handle your father. Nobody gets the best of me like that, John, nobody takes me for a fool like Patrick has. Just because nobody’s ever gotten the best of Patrick Sheppard doesn’t mean he’s in any way capable of taking Nancy Callahan for a ride. Don’t you forget who I am and what I can do. As long as I don’t rush into this all hot-headed, I’ll get what I want and I’ll keep you safe.”

She still had her hand over his mouth, so John did an interpretive eyebrow-dance until she laughed and let go. “If anyone can do it, you can,” he admitted, a little grudgingly. 

“I can,” she said, smirking and settling back into her seat. “So you make sure I know everything I need to know, and let me handle it.” 

“Don’t be cocky about it,” John said. “He eats the cocky for breakfast.”

Nancy sighed and nodded, and he knew she was serious. “Meanwhile,” she said, “I think you need some Joey time, but he can’t miss school. You want to come stay over a couple of nights? I think we can trust ourselves to behave by this point.”

John half-grinned at her. “Maybe,” he said.

She leaned in and said, mock-confidentially, “Your new boyfriend’s pretty cute.”

“Course he is,” Rodney said from the kitchen door. “Are you guys gonna come eat, or what?”

“I’m busy,” John said in mock defensiveness, gesturing to the sleeping child nestled against his chest, but he couldn’t help giving Rodney a warm half-grin. “Anyway that doesn’t smell like anything I can eat.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Rodney said. “I’ve exhaustively researched this and you can have almost everything we ordered.”

“Really,” John said, perking up a little.

“Oh yeah,” Rodney said. 

“Ok, you probably really are a genius,” John decided. 

 

 

Joey woke in a much better mood, ate dinner, and came back to his normal animated self, though he remained fairly clingy. He usually was, when he hadn’t seen John in a while, and while he was starting to get old enough that he should maybe start being a little more independent, John selfishly enjoyed it. 

Up until recently, it was almost all of the physical contact John got in his normal life. But he had a strange lingering awareness through all his limbs that he’d spent the whole night as the little spoon to Rodney’s big spoon, and there was a kind of tingling warmth down in his lower gut that wasn’t quite arousal but flared up like it whenever Rodney got close. He could get used to that. 

Joey finished eating and ran into the living room to get some of the toys he kept in the box under the end table, but came back into the kitchen empty-handed. “Mom,” he said, “can I show Dad my plane?”

“It’s in the car,” Nancy said. “We can get it when we’re done eating.”

“Grandpa said I should show it to Dad,” Joey said urgently. 

“In a minute,” Nancy said. 

John thought about volunteering to go down with him and get it, then mentally assessed his physical capacity to handle the stairs, and remembered that he was about due to take some more painkillers, and thought that perhaps discretion was the better part of valor here. “C’mere,” he said, and pulled Joey back into his lap. “Did you have a fun time with your grandpa?” It felt weird to say that and think of Patrick, weird and jagged in his throat, and he swallowed it down. 

Joey nodded solemnly, then looked up with concern on his face. “He was kind of weird, though, Dad. Did you really live in that house when you were little?”

“I did,” John said, “sometimes. We had more than one house.”

“I have more than one house too,” Joey said, beaming. 

“You do,” John said. He couldn’t remember being Joey’s age, couldn’t remember if his father had held him like this. Maybe he had. It was sort of horrifying to think that so little of this was going to stay in Joey’s memory. If John had bled out in that parking lot, Joey would have grown up with only fuzzy and vague memories of him. It was really too sickening to contemplate.

Joey wriggled as he looked around, and then he froze suddenly, going stiff. John looked down in concern. Joey was staring fixedly at--

“You have a kitty!” Joey whipped around to look up at John with wide eyes. 

“That’s Rodney’s kitty,” John said. Cosmo had been in hiding since Joey’s first appearance, but she was peering around the door from the living room now, eyes green and wide. “I think she’s a little shy, Joey.”

“She’s never seen anyone under about thirty before,” Rodney said. 

“You’re not thirty yet, are you,” John said to Joey, who giggled, but was still staring fixedly at the cat. 

“Rodney’s cat lives in your apartment,” Nancy said. 

“She was getting lonely,” Rodney said. “When John was really weak and I was afraid to leave him alone. So I brought her up here. She likes John.”

“She licks my hair,” John said. “It’s weird.”

“That’s really weird, Daddy,” Joey said, snickering. He vibrated in John’s grasp. “I want to pet her. I’ll be sweet to her. Can I pet her?” 

John looked at Rodney. “She’ll probably run away,” Rodney said. 

“Maybe if you go really slowly toward her,” John said. Joey slid down from his lap, but as soon as his feet touched the ground, Cosmo turned and bolted. Joey turned back to John, suddenly shy because everyone was watching him, and put his face against John’s lap. John ruffled his hair. “It’s okay, buddy,” John said. “Maybe later.”

“Hey,” Nancy said, “let’s go get your plane.” She pushed her chair away from the table and stood up, and Joey ran to the door and put his shoes on. John watched him take Nancy’s hand. There weren’t very many more years where he’d want to hold on like that. 

“Your kid is so goddamn cute,” Rodney said crossly as the door shut. “How does he do that?”

John shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I was never that cute.” Rodney stood up, taking a stack of dishes over to the sink, then came back and stood next to John, who put an arm out and looped it around his waist to pull him in close. John rested the side of his head against Rodney’s belly, enjoying the warmth of his body. 

“It’s not cute, I’d call you now,” Rodney said, putting a hand into John’s hair and ruffling it. “You gonna go stay with Nancy a little while?”

Rodney was trying, really he was, John thought, but it was pretty easy to hear the wistfulness under his false-jovial tone. He tilted his head to look up at Rodney. “I think I’ll stay here,” he said. “What would I do all day there? I’ll visit once I can drive myself.” 

Rodney smiled crookedly, still trying not to show too much emotion. His face was ill-suited to concealment, though. “You’re overdue for your pill,” he said.

John nodded. “I’ll take it in a bit,” he said. “I’m not hurting too bad yet.”

“That’s progress,” Rodney said, playing with John’s hair. 

“Yeah,” John said. “I may lead a normal life again someday.”

Rodney had started to answer him with a pedantic recitation of statistics about people without spleens, but Joey came stampeding back up the stairs, and Rodney stepped away just in time to avoid being trampled as Joey full-on leapt into John’s lap. “Oof,” John said, managing to get an arm in place to protect his injury just before impact. Joey settled himself and triumphantly produced a very, very, very familiar model airplane. 

John stared at it, recognition like a punch to the gut. It was a 1:72 scale plastic model of a P-51 Mustang, painstakingly hand-painted. He’d made it with his mother, not long before she died, along with more than a dozen others, sitting at the card table in the den with a magnifier and glue and his mother’s shorter and shorter spells of lucidity. She’d fought hard to maintain the attention and control to paint this one. 

He took the plane carefully between his fingers, turning it over to look at the tiny brushstrokes in the nose art. His hands were shaking and his whole body had gone hot and cold and was hot again. “Grandpa said this was yours,” Joey said. 

“It was my most treasured possession,” John said, and his voice came out very quietly and a little uneven. He cleared his throat and swallowed hard before continuing. “Your grandma and I made this, and painted it, when she was sick and dying. We made a whole bunch of little planes like this. Did Grandpa tell you what kind of plane this is?”

“A Mustang,” Joey said, proud of himself for remembering, but he twisted a little in the middle, fidgeting uncertainly. “I thought that was a kind of car though.”

“It’s that too,” John said, “but later. This is a World War Two fighter plane, before they invented jet engines— it’s what they had before F-16s. The P-51 Mustang. It had a propellor, and machine guns. This one is painted up with invasion stripes like the planes for D-Day. Do you remember what happened on D-Day?”

“D-Day is when they all went in at once to end the war!” Joey said. “Like in that movie!”

John laughed at that, a little wildly— it felt like his injury had opened up and was bleeding again, but he knew it hadn’t. “The History Channel’s not doin’ a great job with you,” he said, and kissed Joey on the head. “Sure, maybe. This kit came with stickers but we didn’t like the stickers, we did our own research and painted it ourselves this way because we’d read a book about it. For the invasion they gave up on camoflage, since there were so many planes there was no point trying to hide them. Instead they gave them all black and white stripes so it would be easy to know they were friendly, not enemies.” He turned the plane over and ran his finger along the underside of one wing, feeling where the paint was a little rough. “Mom did one wing, and I did the other one. Can you see which is which?”

“This one’s smoother,” Joey said, rubbing his finger almost reverently along the underside of one wing.

“You’re so smart,” John said, and kissed him on the head again. “I think maybe you’re the smartest boy that ever lived. Yeah, your grandma did that one.”

Joey beamed up at him and wiggled closer in his lap. He was still feeling shy because Rodney was there and he didn’t know him, John could tell. “We built model planes,” Joey said. “When I was here before.” 

“Yes,” John said. “But I’m not as good a painter as your grandma was, so we just used the stickers that came with them.”

Joey nodded, pushing the top of his head into John’s chest as he wriggled. “I keep them in my bedroom,” Joey said, quietly like he was telling a secret. “I look at them every day.”

John smiled at him. It hurt, it fucking hurt, God. “I had fourteen or fifteen little planes like this,” he said. “Including one really cool big one, it was a big model of a B-17 bomber.” He held up his hand, indicating a length of about two feet. “Really big. That was one of the medium-range bombers, with four propellors, thirteen machine guns, and a Plexiglass nose so the bombardier could see his target.”

“Did you leave them behind when you moved out?” Nancy asked, and he could see it, could see the tension in her jaw as she waited for his answer. 

“No,” John answered, smiling tightly. 

Joey looked up. “What happened to them?” he asked. 

John couldn’t look at him without thinking about how much it had hurt. He looked away, seeing and not seeing the kitchen wall, remembering so vividly how painful it had been to put those planes into cardboard boxes. The housekeeper, Rosa, had cried as she’d helped him. She was the one who had taught him how to cry without making any noise, how to turn your face so no one saw. That had been an important skill to master at that point in his life, when he was too young not to cry entirely but too old for tears to get him any mercy. “Grandpa said I couldn’t have them anymore,” he said. “He told me he threw them away.”

“But he didn’t,” Joey said, frowning and turning the Mustang over in his hands. “Or how could he have this one to give it to me?”

“I don’t know,” John said, shaking his head. He was a little bit dizzy. “I didn’t see what he did with them because I had to go to the doctor and have surgery because my nose got broken.”

He heard the little noise Nancy made at that, but he couldn’t look at her. “Your nose got broken,” Joey said, wondering, and reached up to touch it, running one slightly-sticky finger delicately down the bridge of John’s nose. He found the bump unerringly, pressing carefully with a tiny fingertip. “Right there?”

“Right there,” John said. 

“Did it hurt?” Joey asked. 

“A lot,” John said. “There was a lot of blood. I thought I was going to die.”

“Not as much blood as when you got shot, though,” Joey said doubtfully. 

“No,” John answered, and laughed. “But when it happened, I wasn’t all that much older than you are now, so I didn’t know yet how much blood you can lose and not die. Now I know. If it happened now I wouldn’t be scared, I would just be mad. But when you don’t know something, it’s a lot scarier.”

“Yeah,” Joey said. “That’s why you’re not scared of anything, Daddy. Because you know everything.”

 

 

 

 

“He took your fucking model planes,” Rodney said as he came back through the door. John was curled on the couch, a little cold like he usually was now while he was trying to digest food. He was less depressed than he normally was when Joey left, though, because he’d taken his pain meds and was mellow as hell from it. He just sort of felt hollow, which wasn’t pleasant but at least was less bad. 

“Mm-hmm,” John said a little dreamily, shivering. “I don’t remember what I said, I really don’t. I’m not trying to be a jerk or not tell his side of the story or whatever, I just really don’t remember what I said that set him off, but he just flew off the handle about me talkin’ back and bein’ disrespectful and whatever, and he hit me real hard, just cracked me across the jaw— nobody’d ever hit me like that before, not an adult— and grabbed me by the arm and shook me and he was yellin’ that I should go to my room and never come out, and he threw me up the stairs and I don’t know, I caught my foot or somethin’, I went flyin’ and hit the bannister with my face so hard— I mean _so hard_ , Rodney, it hurt _so bad_ — but he didn’t mean to break my nose, I’m sure of that.” He waved a hand, curling in a little tighter on himself. It was all very far away, now, and the words were just sort of coming out of his mouth with no conscious input. He’d babbled so much today it sort of seemed like keeping on talking was the right thing to do. “He was pretty upset to begin with, really on-edge, because Mom had just died, I think the month before, and he was just so upset about it, you know? So he was, you know, it wasn’t like he was like that all the time.” John frowned, blinking. “Why are you lookin’ at me like that?” 

Rodney had sat down beside him on the couch and had his head tilted slightly to one side, and something in his expression looked… stricken, or hurt somehow. “You’re…” Rodney said. He shook his head. “He took away a thing a little boy’s recently-dead mother made him, and physically assaulted said little boy, and you’re concerned with explaining to me how it’s not his fault.”

“No I’m not,” John said, frowning. “I just mean, it wasn’t always like that.” He leaned his head against the back of the couch, a little light-headed. 

“I can’t believe he took your fucking model airplanes away,” Rodney said. “I mean, I thought my dad was bad, all this time. You poor bastard. It’s a miracle you’ve made it anywhere in life.”

“Fuck you,” John said, curling in on himself as a little spike of hurt made it through the weird sense of distance the pain meds had given him. 

“No no no no no,” Rodney exclaimed, gesturing wildly with his hands in a frantic cutting gesture. “No! No, John, no, I don’t— I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t mean that. That’s not what I meant. I meant, it’s, you’re amazing, John, and I— I just don’t know how you made it through, through all that.” He hovered anxiously, close enough to touch but not quite close enough to crowd, mouth hooking down on one side, long fingers flexing. 

“’Swhy I never told anybody,” John said sullenly, pulling away, but he was too heavy to get up, pulled down by the drugs and his sudden depression that Rodney was being an asshole again. 

“No,” Rodney said, “John, no, I didn’t mean it like that. I swear. It— it was a stupid thing to say. I know. I always say stupid things. I’m sorry.”

John rubbed his face, let out a long sigh, and looked warily over at Rodney. “I’m not some brave little toaster or something,” he said. “I’m just a guy who’s seen some shit. It doesn’t matter. I just don’t want to talk about it unless I have to.”

Rodney nodded. “I know. I know. I get it.” He looked miserable, and John wearily thought that it was pretty likely the guy had even worse shit in his past. 

He relented, decided he didn’t like seeing Rodney like this. “C’mere,” he said, struggling to his feet. Rodney got up and helped him up solicitously, and John took Rodney’s face between his hands and kissed him. “It’s a shitty day out. Let’s go lie in bed.”

“I like this idea,” Rodney said. 

It was late afternoon by now, and the light coming in the window was gray and indirect, ice still rattling against the panes as the wind gusted. Lying down eased some of John’s light-headedness. Rodney curled tentatively around him, and he sighed and settled comfortably into the hollow of the other man’s body. 

“You should probably know,” Rodney said, after a little while wherein John drifted as Rodney’s hand moved soothingly up and down his side, “I have kind of a lot of my own demons, too.” 

Talking was hard, so it was a moment before John managed to wrap his mouth around some syllables. “Arrest warrant?” he asked blurrily.

“What?”

_Yeah, no shit he couldn’t understand you, John,_ he thought, and tried again. “Do you have any outstanding arrest warrants?”

“What? No,” Rodney said, confused. 

“How ‘bout illegal drug habits?” John asked. 

“Illegal drugs, no. Legal, prescription drugs, yes.”

“Yeah but like, a doctor gave you them, or you stole them somewhere?” John persisted. 

“I, uh, a doctor,” Rodney said. “Prescribed them.”

“Then it’s cool,” John said, and yawned. 

“I’m serious,” Rodney said. “I’m kind of screwed-up.”

“Yeah,” John said, “I figured.” He rolled a little more into Rodney’s space, stroking his hair back from his face. “As long as it’s not something that conflicts with my day job, I really don’t care. You put up with my shit, I’ll put up with your shit.”

“Yeah, but—“ Rodney said. 

“You’re a guy who’s seen some shit,” John said. “I’m a guy who’s seen some shit.”

“True,” Rodney said. 

“So I’m here for you,” John said. “I’m just really tired of talking about feelings. Can we not talk about feelings, for a little bit?”

“We could feel each other instead,” Rodney suggested.

John laughed, putting his face into the crook where Rodney’s neck met his shoulder. “We should be naked, for that.”

“We can get naked,” Rodney said. 

“You have good ideas,” John answered, but it was muffled by Rodney pulling his shirt up over his head. It hurt to move enough to get undressed all the way, even through the pills, and he curled onto his bad side, hunching around the pain a little sulkily until it dissipated. Rodney wrapped around him from behind, the skin of his arm’s under side sliding so soft against the skin of John’s flank. 

Rodney was kissing the back of his shoulder, mouth soft and wet, and it made John shiver, and slowly uncurl to lie on his back. Rodney’s hand slid across his belly, skirting delicately around the edge of the bandage, tracing repetitive patterns in his skin. He was following the planes of the various muscles and ridges and things, and made an oddly satisfied little noise as he traced the groove that went from John’s hipbone down toward his groin. 

“What?” John asked.

“Inguinal ligament,” Rodney said. He spread his fingers, his hand broad enough to span from the groove over to John’s navel. “You’re so skinny I figured you’d have a six-pack. But it doesn’t really show.”

“You show me a guy with a six-pack and I can tell you that’s a guy who isn’t as strong as he could be,” John said. “If I were a model or something, maybe I’d have time for that shit, but these are meant to be functional abs, not decorative ones.” 

“I knew you cared about fitness,” Rodney said, sounding satisfied. “I knew you had opinions. I bet you nerd out about nutrition sometimes.”

“Nah,” John said, and turned his head enough to kiss Rodney’s nose. “I just run a lot. But by the time this stupid thing heals I’ll have no muscle tone or stamina left.”

Rodney’s fingers mapped out the scar just above his navel, from a knife wound, then went up a little higher to his chest and unerringly found the places where the electrical burns made the hair grow funny, changed the texture of the skin, but at least weren’t particularly visible. “You run a whole lot,” Rodney observed, then slid a little closer to put his mouth on John’s neck. 

His dick twitched, at that, which was notably the first sign of life it had showed in a while. He definitely didn’t have the mobility to do much yet but it’d be pretty great to have at least a chance at an option of getting up to some trouble. Turning gay would be kind of a letdown if he didn’t get some function back pretty soon. 

“I like running,” John said, a little indistinctly as his brain’s processing power increasingly devoted itself to cataloguing all the sensations of Rodney’s mouth right— nngh— there under his jaw, just behind his ear, _“Nnmmgh.”_

“You like this too,” Rodney observed, amused. 

“Mmm,” John managed. Right about now he would have liked to roll over on top of Rodney and pin him to the bed and exact some sort of revenge, figure out if he had any spots on his neck that shut his brain-mouth connection down, but rolling over like that, let alone doing even light-duty pinning down, was pretty far beyond him. Instead he lay still while Rodney licked his way down across his collarbone, scraping teeth lightly over the ridge of bone there as his hand stroked gently along John’s hip. 

“When I can move my torso again,” John said after a moment, “I got a list of things I’m gonna do to you.”

“Oh yeah?” Rodney propped his chin on his hand, looking up. “I’ve kind of had a list of ideas, myself.”

“I mean,” John said, “I obviously need some practice at blowjobs. That’s an obvious one. But I don’t need to be healed to do that.”

“You do all right,” Rodney said, voice a little strained as he shifted in a manner that pretty obviously involved making additional room for his erection. 

“You ever been fucked, Rodney?” John asked, letting his voice drop low. He was rewarded with a full-body shudder from Rodney. 

“No,” Rodney managed with some difficulty. Oh, he was all the way hard now, for sure.

“I got that on my list of things to try,” John said. “Think you’d like that?”

“Yes,” Rodney said hoarsely.

“Now, I’m not like super kinky or anything,” John said, keeping his drawl sweetly rough, “but I know vanilla’s not the only flavor. It’s a good flavor, don’t get me wrong, and sometimes there’s just nothing better than a long slow sweet plain old fuck.” Rodney actually whimpered, just a little. “Mm,” John went on, tugging gently at Rodney’s chin, encouraging him to come up and lie against him, smooth slide of skin against skin, hot press of erection against John’s hip. “Just regular old fucking, all deep and thorough, lasts all evening, candles and flowers and shit like that. But I bet you like it rough sometimes. You have the kind of sweet ass that can take a good pounding, I bet. I’d like to take you hard up against the wall, bend you over the table like I can’t wait another second, give it to you so hard you feel it the next day. Maybe even a little spanking, maybe I could tie you up a little?”

Rodney’s wriggle not-so-gradually turned into full-blown rubbing himself off against John’s hip as John spoke, and by the last sentence his hips were hitching unsteadily, cock leaking against John’s skin. John’s dick was making a valiant attempt but just wasn’t quite there, not quite, but it was definite progress. It was frustrating and hot all at the same time, and John shivered and grabbed Rodney’s cock. 

“Oh God,” Rodney said, almost a sob, his whole body quivering with tension. “John. John!”

“Yeah,” John said, and as Rodney started to come he closed his hand convulsively around John’s dick, and that was suddenly, abruptly enough, and John was coming too, improbably, sort of painfully— his abs really weren’t up for that kind of involuntary pelvic motion— and he hung on to Rodney and shuddered through it with a strangled cry that was about equal parts pleasure and pain. 

He curled breathlessly around the pain, trembling and raw like every nerve had been scraped bare, and Rodney folded around him, kissing his neck and his shoulder and his ear. “John,” Rodney murmured, pulling him snug against his own body, “John.”

It took a few moments for John to stop shaking. Rodney started to pull away, and John wrapped his fingers around Rodney’s forearm with a faint noise of protest that was the most articulate thing he could manage speech-wise. Rodney relaxed, and came back to press against him. 

“My list of things I want to do to you isn’t so much a list,” Rodney said meditatively, after a while. “But I guess it’s not too pathetic to admit that I’ve spent the last couple of months pretty much exclusively tormenting myself by thinking of what it would be like to be with you. I came up with a lot of really hot scenarios. And they were torture, then. But now…” He trailed off. The ice was still rattling against the windows, gusts of wind occasionally shaking the panes of glass, and the light was fading into dusk, wrapping them slowly in darker and darker gray shadows. 

“Now,” Rodney concluded, “it’s sort of the opposite of torture. I just sort of can’t believe I get to touch you, get to taste you, get to hold you like this. I don’t want to fuck it up, John. I want to keep this, want to keep us.”

With considerable effort, John uncurled, and turned over onto his other side, facing Rodney. “Um,” he said. He was pretty talked-out, and his brain had pretty much melted out of his dick, or so it felt— he certainly didn’t have any capacity for eloquent speech left. “Ditto.”

Rodney snorted, and leaned in and gave him a long, lingering, gentle kiss. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love everyone in this bar. Thanks, really, to everyone who's read, everyone who has kudos-ed, and especially everyone who's commented.  
> A couple bouts of insomnia have gotten me several of the future plot points written, but I still have to do all the connecting scenes. The insomnia also informs me that smut is the best way to go with that, so...  
> :)


	12. All In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John's not sure whether he just came out to his dad or not but he is definitely, definitely sure that Rodney's worth the inevitable fireworks, for an entire host of reasons starting with that thing he can do with his tongue.

 

 

 

“Yow,” someone was calling, “yow? Yow? Yrrmao? Yowww.” John cracked an eye open, confused. Oh. Daylight. Who— 

“Shh,” Rodney said in the next room, sounding annoyed. 

John rolled over. It was midmorning. He’d woken at 4am in real bad pain, so he’d taken a pill, and it had pretty well knocked him out. He was really tired of that, and the bottle was running low. Maybe he’d see how long he could go without one today. “Yow,” the person said, and John finally, finally made the connection that it was the cat. 

“Yo, Cosmo,” John said hoarsely to the cat, who was standing in the doorway looking affronted. 

“Mmrrryow,” she complained, flicking her tail by way of reply. 

John got out of bed and shuffled into the living room. Rodney was set up with three laptops, now, staring at one and frowning. He looked up, hearing John, and blinked. “Sorry,” he said, “Cosmo gets mouthy sometimes.”

“Time to get up anyway,” John said. He scratched his hair. “Coffee left?”

“Yeah,” Rodney said, “I left you a cup. Might be cold now.”

“’Sokay,” John said, and shuffled into the kitchen. Cosmo did her best to trip him, winding around his legs and yowling some more, but he made it safely to the kitchen and got his coffee. She jumped up and sat in his lap and purred. Apparently that was what she’d wanted all along, so he sat and petted her and drank his coffee.

He took his chances and managed a solo shower once he was properly caffeinated, and removed the goatee, which he thought really didn’t suit him. Maybe a whole beard, if he didn’t mind looking demented, but not a goatee. He managed to change his dressing on his own, and gave the healing injury a long, grossed-out look in the mirror. It was a twisted, puckered mass of healing tissue and fading bruises and criss-crossing lines of neat stitching. They’d done a good job, better than some of the hurried patch-jobs he’d had in the Air Force, but it was still gonna be an ugly-ass scar. And the massive bruising around it had started to fade, but was still visible, spreading out in ugly dark smudges in a wide radius.

This injury definitely meant the Air Force would never take him back. Which wasn’t anything he’d ever seriously considered, but it had always been in the back of his mind, that he could re-join. They’d be unlikely to take him because of his age, but with the current military overcommitment the possibility had still been there. 

Not now. Not like this. 

Anyway, he was gay now, so they wouldn’t want him for that either, he reminded himself. He stared at himself in the mirror a little while longer, processing that. Did he look gayer? He’d apparently always looked gay, though. So there really shouldn’t be any difference. He ran his fingers through his wet hair, making his usual attempt at trying in vain to make it look deliberate, and dug out a new dressing for his nasty scar-in-the-making. 

Rodney knocked on the door and as he opened it, thrust John’s cellphone at him. It was ringing. John grabbed it, infected by Rodney’s contagious sense of urgency, and answered it without looking at the caller ID. 

“Sheppard,” he said. 

“Johnny, my boy,” Patrick Sheppard said, and John closed his eyes in resignation. 

“Hey,” he said warily. He wished he had pants on. He knew his dad couldn’t see him, but it made him metaphorically more vulnerable, and he needed any advantage he could get.

“I hear you’ve had something of an occupational-hazard issue,” Patrick went on smoothly, jovially. 

“I was off-duty,” John said. “I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nothin’ to do with my job.”

“Really,” Patrick said. 

“Yes,” John said. “But, as it happens, I’m recovering just fine, thanks for asking, Dad.”

“That is, in fact, what I called to enquire about,” Patrick said. “It looked very gory, on the news.”

“I lost a fair bit of blood,” John said, “but it was mostly a flesh wound. I’ll be fine, I just need a little recovery time.” He took the dressing and bandages out into the living room, set them on the coffee table, and went into the bedroom.

“Think you’ll be off work for a little while, then?” Patrick asked. 

There was the crux of it. That’s why Patrick was calling. To gloat, without ever having to gloat, that John was going to fall behind on the mortgage and this was going to be the compounding interest straw that broke the camel’s back. John sighed silently to himself, propping the phone between his chin and shoulder as he pulled on a pair of jeans. 

“Little bit, yeah,” John said. “Not too long, though, the chief says she’s got light duty I can do as soon as I get a few more of the stitches out.” That was a lie. He was screwed. Maybe he could borrow money from Rodney. But as soon as he had the thought, he dismissed it. No way was he gonna fuck up the one good thing he had going for him by getting finances involved. There was nothing worse for a relationship than money problems, and he knew he’d be as hard-pressed to pay Rodney back as he was Patrick. 

“If you’ve got some spare time,” Patrick said, “you know, while you’re healing, I was wondering if you might come visit along with your son. I had such a lovely time seeing him, this past weekend, I don’t know if I can even express how glad I was when Nancy called.”

John stood a moment in shocked silence. He really didn’t know how to answer that. He couldn’t spot the trap, immediately, which was the most nerve-wracking aspect of it. “I, um,” he said, nonplussed. 

“Cat got your tongue?” Patrick asked, jovial and charming, the act that lulled board members into complacency through camaraderie until he obliterated them while they weren’t looking. 

“I don’t really know what to say,” John said. “You’ve never asked me to visit before.” He walked back out into the living room. Rodney was hovering, anxious. He gestured at the dressing, making a plaintive face, and Rodney nodded, bringing the dressing over and helping him apply it. 

“There comes a time,” Patrick said, “when an old man wants to make peace.” 

 _Bullshit_ , John almost said, but he bit his tongue at the last moment and managed instead to say, “Ow,” as Rodney smoothed the dressing across the wound. He patted Rodney’s shoulder soothingly. “So is that what the model airplane was meant to indicate?” he asked, a little more controlled. “I couldn’t decide whether you meant it as a token or a threat or what.”

“Now, John,” Patrick said. 

“Don’t ‘now John’ me,” John said, absolutely and perfectly calm. “You taught me these lessons yourself, Dad.”

“I don’t know what kind of a threat I could possibly intend,” Patrick said. “I found those planes where I’d put them into storage during one of the times when you weren’t speaking to me, and I’ve been trying to think of a time to give them back to you. It seemed most fitting to start by giving one to Joey.”

“You told me you threw them out,” John said, and his whole body went hot, blood rushing in his neck, behind his eyes. “You told me I didn’t deserve them anymore. This is like when you disowned me forever except you didn’t really mean forever, you just meant until you got bored with it.”

“I’m not the one making childish sweeping statements like ‘forever’,” Patrick said, audibly very slightly annoyed. That was a pretty major victory. John looked over at Rodney, who had crept back over to his chair and picked up his laptop but hadn’t opened it. Rodney raised his eyebrows. John rolled his eyes, and turned away again.

“When issued an ultimatum,” John said, “I take into account its ultimate nature before I make my decision, and I don’t go back on those sorts of things. Life is too short and uncertain to bank on second chances, Dad. Didn’t you teach me that?”

“I have said nothing of the sort,” Patrick said. “I prefer not to write anything off permanently, because that very uncertainty means that things change. Am I to understand, from all this, that it was only Nancy’s idea to involve me in my grandson’s life, and you are still hostile to the idea?”

“I’m not hostile,” John said, managing not to audibly bristle because it would be too hilariously self-contradictory for Patrick to let slide. Anger made him reckless. “I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Our relationship has always largely consisted of you kicking me while I’m down, and a gunshot wound certainly constitutes _down_.”

Patrick paused for a long moment. “I am sorry you see it that way, John.”

“I’ve tried to see it as a learning opportunity but that got old about twenty years ago,” John said. 

Patrick sighed. “Well,” he said, “if you decide to be pleasant and civil to your blood family at any point, I am having your brother and his wife and children over to dinner on Wednesday night to mark the occasion of Adele’s birthday. If you come, Dave planned on bringing his kids over in the afternoon when they get out of school so they could get a chance to see Joey over more than just dinner. You know his son PJ is only about a year older than Joey, he was quite enchanted at the thought of seeing his cousin when I mentioned to Dave that I might invite you.”

John chewed on his lip. Yeah, PJ was adorable. Dave’s wife Adele was really nice, too, very unexpected given how Dave and John’s relationship had always been. But logistics. “I don’t think I’ll be cleared to drive by then,” John said, “but if I can bring a friend, I could manage. I’d be happy for PJ and Joey to have some time together.”

“I could send a driver,” Patrick said. “You know that would be no trouble.”

John turned and looked at Rodney, who had by this point opened his laptop but wasn’t even making a pretense of looking at it. He obviously felt like eavesdropping wasn’t quite the thing to do but wasn’t about to leave the room. It was fine; if John hadn’t wanted him to hear any of this at any point, he’d have left the room at least, more likely closed a door or something. “No,” John said, “it would be silly to send someone all the way out here. Either my friend will drive us or Nancy will, if one or the other of them is free.”

“I invited Nancy as well,” Patrick said. “She had said she might bring a date, but wasn’t sure if she had the evening free.”

John considered that, looking at Rodney. So Patrick knew about Nancy’s new boyfriend, then. Well, that was peachy. Rodney pointed at himself, raised his eyebrows. John nodded, looked questioning. Rodney blinked, nonplussed, then shrugged and nodded. “I’m pretty sure my friend can make it,” John said, “so even if she can’t, or has other plans, I’m set for a ride.”

Patrick hmm’d thoughtfully. “All right,” he said, then his voice went a little sly. “Is this friend perhaps a new girlfriend?” he asked. 

John laughed, unable not to. “He would probably find that description very funny,” John said. 

“Oh,” Patrick said, stunned. 

 _Fuck_ , had he just come out to his dad? He scrabbled for what to say next that would correct that impression without lying, then realized with a thrill of, perhaps, horror that there was no wrong impression to correct. And was he really going to try not to let on to his dad that he was seeing a man? Jesus. This was complicated and terrifying. 

“He’s my downstairs neighbor,” John said. “He’s pretty much saved my life in the aftermath of getting shot.”

“Oh,” Patrick said, less flat and a little warmer. Shit, he _had_ just lied by inference. That wasn’t really the way to make this less confusing. But brave as John sometimes thought he was, there was absolutely no way he was going to manage to force the words _and we’re fucking_ past his lips into his father’s ear. 

“Yeah, it’s been really nice to have someone to count on,” John said, rambling a little as he frantically tried to sort out what he should or shouldn’t say. But it was futile. “So, Wednesday around four? I’ll work out the logistics with Nancy and see if my friend is available to come along.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Patrick said. “What’s his name?”

“Rodney,” John said. “And he’s really horribly allergic to citrus, like apparently the fatal kind of allergy.”

“Mm,” Patrick said, “you know Elise is allergic to peanuts, right?” Elise was Dave’s older daughter. 

“I didn’t, actually,” John said. “So I’ll keep that in mind, then. Should I bring anything?”

“Oh,” Patrick said, “Adele asked that we not get her presents, she’s kind of uncomfortable with that sort of thing, so no, I don’t really need you to bring anything.”

Wine, then, and John tried to remember if he had any stashed anywhere. Making a trip to pick some up was likely to be a logistical nightmare since he wasn’t lying, he really wasn’t cleared to drive. Given his hesitance about cheese, it was unlikely Rodney was going to have any great facility at the fine art of picking wine for people with expensive tastes without just spending every dollar you’d ever earned. “Then I’ll see you Wednesday,” John said, and rang off. 

He let himself collapse slowly down onto the couch, dropping the phone onto the coffee table. “Shit,” he said. 

“Bad?” Rodney asked gingerly. 

“Let me ask you properly,” John said. “Do you want to go to dinner at my father’s house on Wednesday? It’s my sister-in-law’s birthday and her son PJ is only a little older than Joey and wants to hang out with his cousin.”

“Yes,” Rodney said. 

“Good,” John said. He rubbed his face. “I don’t know whether I just came out to my dad or not, and I really truly don’t know whether I want him to have figured it out or not.”

“It’s okay,” Rodney said. “I mean. If you don’t. It’s okay. I’m cool just being your neighbor, as far as he knows.”

John looked at him, considering that. “Maybe for now,” John said, “but I don’t know how cool I’d be with that in the long-term.” He shook his head. “I’m not gonna pretend not to be who I am. If I were gonna do that I might as well have just gone along with all of Patrick’s plans for me from the beginning.”

“Well,” Rodney said. “Either way, I’m not likely to complain, especially if you keep standing around wearing jeans and nothing else.”

John looked down at himself and laughed. “This isn’t today’s final outfit,” he said, “I just needed to have some clothes on.”

“You can stay like that if you want,” Rodney said. And it was so long since John had been able to just enjoy someone leering at him, so long since he’d been in on it, that he decided to turn the heat up a little and hold off on putting on a shirt. 

 

 

By noon John was stir-crazy, and starting to feel guilty for distracting Rodney so much. He put on his cleanest remaining hoodie and stood in front of Rodney, holding out his hand. “Gimme your keys.”

“What?” Rodney looked up, blinking in confusion. “Aw, you put a shirt on.”

“You work for a living,” John said. “Unless I want to take up exotic dancing to support you, I gotta put a shirt on sometime and let you keep winning bread.”

“You’d support me by stripping,” Rodney said, boggling a little, and John realized he’d just short-circuited the guy’s brain again. It was kind of awesome, actually, how into him Rodney was— gratifying, even— but with great power came great responsibility, and John wasn’t even sexually functional enough yet to really enjoy it so he kind of wanted to save some of the effect until he could really do something with it. 

“It’s my only other marketable skill,” John said, though that was overstating his dancing ability kind of a _lot,_ “besides shooting people.” And flying. _Shh_. He snapped his fingers. “C’mon, gimme your keys.”

“Are you taking my car somewhere?” Rodney asked, but John noted that he was, in fact, digging his keys out of his laptop bag. 

“No,” John said. “Your apartment.”

“What do you want my apartment keys for?” Rodney asked, snatching his hand back in dismay and holding the keys against his chest. “It’s a disaster area in there, you’ll die of an infection if you so much as set foot in the place.”

“Exactly,” John said. “I had a feeling. Give. I’m cleaning your apartment.”

“No,” Rodney said. “No no no no no. You have a compromised immune system. Don’t you dare go in there.”

John put his hands on his hips. “C’mon,” he said. “It’s not that compromised. Or do you have bioweapons in there?”

“Just metric fucktons of cat hair,” Rodney said. “And clutter, and— no, John, you’re not going in there, it’s too embarrassing.”

“You left your porn out, didn’t you,” John said, leaning his hip against the doorframe. Rodney’s eyes tracked his hips. “Anything good?”

“My porn is disproportionately straight,” Rodney said. “I suppose that’s a little embarrassing, given my current proclivities.” He looked a little shifty-eyed. “I have acquired a bunch more gay porn lately. For research.”

“And they’re all lying out,” John said. 

“Kinda,” Rodney admitted. 

“Give,” John said. “I won’t die.”

The ostensible point had been to get him out of the apartment so he would stop distracting Rodney, but Rodney insisted on accompanying him down the stairs, and helping with the project. “I can’t let you clean up after me like you’re a housewife,” Rodney said. “Not unless you’re my kept boy.”

“I don’t think I blow you enough for that,” John mused, to distract himself from how dizzy he’d gotten just from the exertion of walking down the stairs. He wasn’t sure how he was going to get back up them. 

Rodney waggled his eyebrows as he unlocked the door. “You could try,” he said.

“If you’re good, I just might,” John answered, licking his lips and thinking it over. He liked the idea of a proper, formal blowjob, maybe against a wall, on his knees and looking up like in a porno. His abs were probably up to it. Maybe. If he didn’t sneeze wrong between now and then. He scowled a little, following Rodney in the door; he was at the stage of recovery where he was just really bored with being injured and wanted to be doing situps and running and having athletic sex already. But realistically, he was probably still mostly at a lying-down-carefully, handjobs level of giving when it came to sex, and not much at all by way of receiving, and it was getting old.

“I like the sound of that,” Rodney said. “Oh God. I— you know, this is a terrible idea.”

John stepped over the rucked-up doormat, realizing it had been crumpled by a cat burying vomit in it. Cute. The room was a mess, with stacks of magazines on every flat surface and piles of clothes everywhere, dirty dishes strewn around, and yes, a damning pile of balled-up tissues on the coffee table next to the remote and a pile of porno DVDs. “I think this was a great idea,” John said. “This is the nicest apartment in the building, has a kitchen twice the size of mine and a nicer bathroom with a real cast-iron clawfoot tub, has a spare room, and yet you’re cramming yourself into my place.”

“How do you know what this apartment is like?” Rodney asked. 

“Because when I first moved in, this is the one I rented,” John answered. “Until I realized I couldn’t afford it, and moved upstairs. The rent down here’s double.”

“That much more?” Rodney asked, shocked. 

“You have laundry and a dishwasher,” John pointed out. “Plus the fireplace.”

“The fireplace works?” Rodney had shoved a plant stand into it, which now had a dead plant sitting on it. 

“Yes,” John said, “it does.” He stood in the middle of the room and surveyed it a moment. All the furniture was new, a mix of expensiveish middle class stuff and Ikea. Most of it sort of matched. Everything was dingy with cat hair, but there was just so much room in here. It was a really great apartment, with the remnants of the house’s original formal parlor in the front, gorgeous woodwork and a parquet floor and oak paneling on the interior walls, leaded-glass window details, built-in wall cabinets either side of the fireplace. It was a nice place and moving out of it had just broken John’s heart. 

“Oh,” Rodney said. “I mean, I like this place, I just… wait, you don’t have laundry?”

“Nope,” John said. “Where would it go, in my tiny apartment?”

Rodney considered that a moment, then asked, “Wait, when Joey visits, where does he sleep?”

“I make him up a bed on the couch,” John said. “Which he likes, and thinks is super keen for about two hours, and then he always comes and sleeps in my bed with me.” He shrugged. “Which I like, but that’s not gonna fly forever. And it’s definitely not gonna fly if I have a boyfriend.”

“Oh,” Rodney said. He was starting to pick up dirty dishes, which was a damn good start. “So, um, did you— are you thinking of moving in with me?”

John hadn’t actually gotten that far, he’d just thought it was stupid that he had to trip over Rodney in his place when there was this big beautiful space downstairs. “No, no,” John said. “Well, I mean, not _no_ ,” he amended hastily, seeing Rodney’s stricken expression. “I just meant, it’s gonna be crowded upstairs if I have Joey and you’re around and,” he gathered his courage, “I want that. I want you to be around.”

Rodney smiled. “So do I,” he said.

John had to abandon his train of thought and go kiss him, then, but Rodney’s armload of dirty dishes kept it from getting out of hand, and he just slid his hands into Rodney’s hair and made him silent promises with the curl of his tongue. “Later,” he murmured, “maybe we can see if that couch is any good for making out on.”

Rodney blushed a little and looked delighted, and John let him go. 

They did good work cleaning the place, and Rodney was cute enough in his concern that John shouldn’t lift anything too heavy that John didn’t get particularly cranky about it. So Rodney wound up doing most of the work, but even so, John tired quickly and eventually retreated to the couch. He was way overdue for another dose of pain medication but he was trying not to take it, so he thought of ways to distract himself and wound up rifling through the stack of porn DVDs. First, he alphabetized them, then reorganized them by genre. 

Rodney liked mild bondage, John noted. He also liked blondes, and seemed marginally to be more of a breast man than an ass man, though neither predominated. The gay porn was, well, John hadn’t looked at a lot of gay porn in his life so he honestly had no idea whether it was bland or not, but it sort of looked generic. Like, intro-level. Most of it was pretty vanilla, across the board. Occasional fake lesbians but who didn’t love fake lesbians?

Rodney leaned on the back of the couch, a little out of breath as he hauled laundry. “Hey,” he said. “You’re into that already, huh?”

“Which one’s your favorite?” John asked. 

Rodney considered it, looking at the stack of DVDs. “Depends,” he said. “For the record, though, this is only about one-sixteenth of my collection. The rest is on the computer. Most of the interesting stuff is on the computer. This is just the background-noise stuff.”

“You use porn as background noise,” John said, blinking at him. 

“Sometimes,” Rodney said. He darted his eyes sideways. “Don’t you?”

“No,” John said, “I pretty much just look at it when I want to get off.”

“Oh,” Rodney said. “Huh.”

“I have a kid,” John pointed out. “He spends just enough time with me that anything I have like that has to be pretty locked down.”

“Oh my God,” Rodney said suddenly, straightening up and looking around. “If Joey’s coming over here I’ve gotta childproof the place.”

John laughed, setting the stack of DVDs on the side table, which was clean now and had been thoroughly wiped down. Rodney was sort of obsessively disinfecting everything, as though he thought John were going to get sick and die if he touched any surface another human had ever touched. The fact that the only other human touching these surfaces was Rodney, whose mouth touched John’s mouth on a regular basis, seemed to have entirely escaped his notice, but it got Rodney to clean thoroughly so John wasn’t going to say anything. 

“It’s fine,” John said. “Joey’s not a toddler. He doesn’t eat things he finds on the floor anymore.”

Rodney picked up the laundry basket again. “Kids do that?”

“For years,” John said. “You have to watch them constantly because anything they find is going in their mouths. One day I was doing work on the sink and lost a tiny part. Three days later I fished it out of the back of Joey’s mouth. A stainless steel washer.” He shook his head. “Believe me, it’s a nice change: now what I have to worry about is what Joey’s going to pick up and _read_.”

“Oh God,” Rodney said, looking around the room in dismay. There were no obvious kid hazards, though the coffee table had sharp corners that would’ve left Joey with some nasty scars a couple of years ago. Still might be a little dangerous. Joey wasn’t clumsy but he was sometimes inappropriately physically fearless. It wasn’t hard to figure out where he’d acquired that trait. 

“Just keep the lurid titty magazines to a minimum,” John said. “Or file them more than four feet up. That oughta do it.”

“I don’t have any lurid titty magazines,” Rodney said. 

A familiar beep sounded and John pushed to his feet and went into the kitchen, trying not to limp visibly. The dishwasher was done, and he opened it and pulled the racks out to let the steam evaporate. “Don’t,” Rodney said, “you shouldn’t bend so much.” 

He was right, was the thing. John couldn’t bend, couldn’t lift anything, couldn’t scrub anything, couldn’t even operate the vacuum cleaner. Not the way he was feeling right now. Cleaning his own apartment had been fine because it had just needed a little tidying. This was too much. 

John regarded the open dishwasher with what he hoped was a reasonably neutral expression. “Yeah,” he said. 

Rodney was frowning at him when he looked up. “When did you last take a pill?”

John shook his head. “It’s fine,” he said. At least the kitchen was clean enough to prepare food in. He’d take it, as progress. The living room was tidy enough that it could be vacuumed and be nearly presentable. The guest bedroom was stuffed full of crap and a hazard to go near. Rodney’s bedroom, John had sort of looked into but hadn’t touched. But the bathroom was spotless now, so there was that. 

“Let’s get some food into you,” Rodney said, “and a pill, and put you down for a nap.”

“I’m not four,” John said. “I don’t need to be put down.” 

Rodney gave him a considering look. “You definitely need medication,” he said. “C’mon, let’s watch porn in bed.”

They put clean flannel sheets on Rodney’s bed. John stretched out, enjoying the king size prescription mattress, while Rodney went back upstairs and got his laptop and John’s medication. 

The porn on Rodney’s laptop was a lot more interesting, and it was filed by type in folders. “I’ve, um,” Rodney said, “kind of been, um, researching gay sex. I kind of… haven’t had a lot of it.”

“Is there that much to it?” John asked. He knew fine well there wasn’t. Men’s bodies only really had a couple of crucial differences from women, and the ass in general wasn’t among them. The G-spot and the prostate were even in pretty similar locations. He wasn’t at all worried about the learning curve on a categorical level, just individual— it was a really, really, really long time since he’d been with anybody but Nancy, at all, and she had pretty specific tastes. He had a pretty good idea Rodney wasn’t gonna want it the same way he gave it to her, even in the places where their gross anatomy was the same.

“Well,” Rodney said. “I research things. It’s what I do.”

“Show me your favorite one,” John said, rolling carefully onto his side, trying to look nonchalant. He was still avoiding the pill. He hurt, but it wasn’t too bad. 

“Hm,” Rodney said. “I don’t think I have an overall favorite. But, hm, let’s see…”

They wound up watching one that featured a slim, well-muscled, dark-haired guy fucking a softer-bodied sandy-haired guy all over a nondescript beige living room, in increasingly improbable positions. “Whoa,” John commented, impressed more by the athleticism than the erotic content. 

“Wait, this is the good part,” Rodney said. The sandy-haired guy was in the other guy’s lap at this point, his back against the other guy’s chest, all his weight supported by the other guy who still somehow had the leverage to keep fucking him, and he turned his head and found the other guy’s mouth for a sloppy kiss. “In a second.”

“Okay,” John said, and then the sandy-haired guy tipped forward onto his hands and knees, and from his body language the other guy was pretty close, fucking him hard and fast, and then suddenly pulling out and coming all over the guy’s ass. He had a nice ass, John noted, but not nearly as nice as Rodney’s, not as round at all, and okay, he got it now, he definitely did. “I, yeah, okay,” he said, a little strangled. 

“You’re thinking of doing that to me,” Rodney pointed out.

“Yup,” John said, and what blood there was in his body was making a valiant attempt at moving south. 

The dark-haired guy had finished coming and now had turned the sandy-haired guy over and was sucking his dick like his life depended on it. “Yeah,” Roney said. 

“Uh,” John said, “yeah.” 

“You like this one?”

John nodded, mesmerized by the bulge of the one guy’s cock showing through the other guy’s cheek as he bobbed his head, taking him deeper. It was pretty standard blowjob fare but John was really used to the giver being a chick, not a guy with a strong jaw and big hands and this was probably what he’d looked like, doing this for Nancy’s strap-on, and okay, he’d never really gotten why she was so into it when she didn’t even have nerve endings in there but yeah, okay. The dark-haired guy had his fingers in the other guy’s fucked-out ass and was really going at his cock like he was dying for it, and the sandy-haired guy threw his head back and made a lot of noise. The dark-haired guy gazed up at him with sultry intensity and pulled off his dick with an ostentatious, long lick, pumping at the shaft with the hand that wasn’t busy finger-fucking him. 

It was a pretty standard facial cumshot, all told, getting the guy mostly in the mouth but across the cheeks too, down his chin, and John said “Okay, yeah, I get it.”

“That’s a good one, yeah?” Rodney looked pleased with himself as he closed the file. 

“Yeah,” John said a little hoarsely. He cleared his throat. “I, um. Your ass is nicer than that guy’s, though.”

“Really?” Rodney preened a little. 

“Yes,” John said, which was enough to get Rodney to shove the computer aside and slide over to kiss him deep and thorough. Rodney was hard, and it crossed John’s mind that he could certainly get fucked in his present condition, but the way his whole body sort of cringed away from the thought told him he definitely wasn’t ready for that yet.

Hopefully, that would change before it became a thing that Rodney noticed, because he really didn’t want to give him the wrong impression. He wanted it, but he’d have to dump a lot of baggage first. And he’d unloaded enough baggage onto Rodney lately that he wasn’t eager to go looking for more. 

“I mean,” Rodney said, “it’s not that I’m that heavily into, you know, cum marking,” and despite how out of breath he was and how busy his tongue was in John’s mouth and under his ear he was still managing to talk, “but it’s always really hot in porn, always gets a reaction, you know, and I’ve never had anybody do that to me,” nngh that spot right there under John’s ear was, like, hard-wired, holy shit, “and it would probably actually be kind of gross but I like thinking about it, you know?”

“Um,” John said, because man his dick deserved a _medal_ , it was a goddamn _champion_ , seriously, “I, um,” and Rodney had just found his erection and paused, beaming down into his face with just the sweetest pleased expression, it should not have been so hot.

“Hey,” he said, “somebody’s awake!”

“Uh,” John said, and he should’ve known his dick was less deterred by pain than it was by opiates or whatever the fuck was in those pills, because he was real goddamn sore but raring to go anyway. “Uh, yeah, Rodney,” his voice got a little shrill because Rodney had dived happily under the covers and was swallowing him down like a goddamn boa constrictor of sex. “Oh my God.” 

Rodney wasn’t being particularly gentle, shoving one of John’s legs up over his shoulder and mouthing at his balls. John put one hand in Rodney’s hair, wrapped the other around his injured side to cut down on the jostling, and held on for dear life. 

Rodney looked up at him with a sweetly evil expression, rummaged off the side of the bed with one hand, and came back with a pump bottle of something, oh God it was lube, and John thought about expressing some sort of hesitation— he was not nearly as robust as Rodney suddenly seemed to think he was and even if the thought of getting fucked didn’t freak him out he simply wasn’t physically strong enough for it, not rough like this— but then Rodney’s slippery hand was squeezing slickly down his shaft and he had to let his head thump back against the pillow and just keep hanging on. It felt so fucking good that he just had to let go and assume that whatever happened was probably going to be awesome so he shouldn’t worry about it. 

He managed not to twitch right off the bed when Rodney’s finger slid into his ass. “Mm,” Rodney said thoughtfully, though as his mouth was full he didn’t have any more commentary to offer.

“Aah,” John said, as close to verbal as he could manage. “Rrr-oh— ah—“ Rodney swallowed him all the way down and pushed his finger in a whole lot farther, “—dnee!” and it was sort of uncomfortable and sort of oh holy _fuck_ what the fuck was _that_ oh Jesus _yes_ were those noises coming out of _his_ mouth? 

The covers had slid off by now and Rodney could look up at him unimpeded, managing to grin even around the obstruction of a mouth full of cock. “Mm,” Rodney said, managing to pack smugness into that impeded syllable, and slid a second finger in beside the first, all the way in— 

“Oh fuck,” John said, “oh yes, oh Jesus,” and he hurt but he couldn’t hold still, pinioned and writhing and hot-slick-tight-pressure-friction “—aah! Ahh, Rodney, ahh fuck!”

It was about all John could do to get his eyes open but he knew this was worth it, and sure enough, even though it had never particularly been his thing before, watching his dick paint Rodney’s flushed face with thick sticky stripes was pretty much the hottest thing he’d ever experienced. 

He more or less passed out then, noticing vaguely when Rodney finished himself off still lying between John’s legs, sort of dimly aware of Rodney wrapping himself around him, sticky and hot and sated. There was a long blank gap and then he woke up and Cosmo was sitting on his chest washing her paws, and Rodney was gone. 

“Hey, you,” he said, and Cosmo paused, regarding him. She leaned down and sniffed his mouth, seeming disappointed that he no longer had a beard or anything for her to creepily groom, then sneezed in his face and walked away. 

A shadow fell, Rodney in the doorway, and John blinked at him. “Hey,” Rodney said, looking pleased. “I’m making dinner, you hungry?”

“Yeah,” John said. He made a couple attempts toward sitting up, but gave up. Rodney came over and sat on the edge of the bed and fed him a pill, then petted his hair while he recovered from that. Eventually he could move enough to roll over and throw an arm around Rodney’s waist/ass region, pressing his face against his hip. 

“You’re kind of a fast healer,” Rodney said, amused. 

“My dick is a goddamn champion,” John said, “but I think it has more ambition than is strictly healthy.”

“Are you okay?” Rodney asked. “I kind of lost my mind for a little bit, there.”

“I’ve probably been better but I don’t remember,” John said. Rodney was looking down at him, smiling so sweetly and fondly John had to summon the strength to sit up and kiss him. 

“This relationship kind of went from zero to sixty in like, two point three seconds,” Rodney pointed out. 

“I don’t fuck around,” John said. “I make a decision, I’m all in. That’s how it works.”

 

 


	13. Hit The Jackpot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John finds out a little more about what Rodney does for a living.  
> Rodney's coworkers are suitably impressed with how well he's doing for himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, it had not even crossed my mind that of course people want to know what happens when they go to dinner at Patrick Sheppard's house. I have so many other plot points coming up that I was not even really that worried about it. Don't worry, it'll be juicy, it's just that everything else is also so dang juicy. It's a juicy story. 
> 
> Sorry, I think I'm a little punchy...

 

Someone was ringing the doorbell for the downstairs apartment. John blinked awake— he’d passed out on the couch again— and dragged himself to the kitchen window to look down. About halfway there he was seized with a sudden, chilling premonition that it was someone his father had sent. Something else his dad would use to trap him. Something else horrible, somehow. 

Great, talking to his dad had brought all the paranoia back. He breathed through it, steeled himself and went the rest of the way to the window. 

A woman was standing on the steps, white, blond, and she was wearing an Air Force uniform, service blues with the formal wool overcoat. John froze, staring down blankly for a moment, then forced himself back into action. 

He’d managed to get himself into jeans and a button-down shirt when he’d gotten up that morning. He grabbed the zip-front sweatshirt slung over the back of the kitchen chair and went out into the hallway as the doorbell rang again. Air Force. What the fuck would the Air Force want here? 

On impulse he went back inside and grabbed his sidearm out of his bedside drawer, checked the magazine, and clipped the holster in the small of his back, pulling the sweatshirt down to cover it before he headed for the stairs.

He rubbed the back of his head nervously and braced himself as he pushed the foyer door open and went out to the main door. The woman watched him approach through the leaded glass of the door. She was youngish, maybe a couple of years older than John himself, quite pretty, and had blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. John bit his lips and opened the door for her. 

“I hope I didn’t ring the wrong bell,” she said, apologetic. “I’m looking for Rodney McKay.”

Rodney worked for the Air Force. John had completely forgotten that. He nodded slowly, letting out a breath. “He lives here,” he said. “He just stepped out, I expect he’ll be back in maybe twenty minutes, half an hour. Unless he gets lost or distracted. That happens.”

She smiled, and yeah, she was quite pretty. _Danger_ , John thought, looking at her. She had silver oak leaf insignia— a lieutenant colonel— and despite her flawless lipgloss, or perhaps because of it, something about her oozed competence. “Yes,” she said, “it does. I assume you know him, then?”

“Yes,” John said. He was still assessing this woman. Lieutenant colonel. It was affecting his posture, stiffening his spine, and that annoyed him. “We… look out for each other.”

“Dr. McKay has been a colleague of mine for some years now,” the woman said. “I’m Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter with the US Air Force. We work on a project together.”

John nodded slowly. “I’m M— John Sheppard.” Stupid. He hadn’t had a military rank in years now. She was looking expectantly at him, head tilted slightly. The polite thing to do would be invite her in. He chewed his lip and made a decision. “Want to come in and wait? He shouldn’t be long.”

“I’d love to,” she said. “If you wouldn’t mind. Do you live with him? He never mentioned that.”

John shook his head slightly. “He, um, I live upstairs.” It only was just now occurring to him that he had no idea whether Rodney would want to be out, whether what they were doing even really counted for him in that kind of way. They’d talked about it briefly in regards to his family, his life, but not Rodney’s at all. “Although, um.” He stepped back, waving her inside. “Long story.”

“So he lives downstairs,” Carter said. 

“Yes,” John said. “Mostly.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I’m on some pretty heavy painkillers at the moment, I’m not so sharp with the conversation skills.”

“Oh dear,” she said, dismayed. 

John realized he had no idea how to explain himself beyond that. “I’m almost better,” he said, looking up at the staircase with sudden trepidation. He’d only been down it the once since he’d gotten back from the hospital. The downward trip just now had been easy enough not to remark, but going back up… Hm. It had been pretty bad, the last time, even well-rested and freshly medicated as he had been on the return journey from cleaning Rodney’s apartment.

He gestured at Carter to precede him, so hopefully she wouldn’t see how slowly he was going to have to take these. Carefully, and with great focus, he applied himself to the climb, concentrating on his breathing, concentrating on keeping momentum, concentrating on not falling over when he reached the top and his vision grayed out a bit at the edges. 

He followed the bannister along to where he knew his door was, and opened it for Carter. “Oh,” she said, and he blinked until he could see that she was looking at him. “Oh dear, you don’t look well.”

“I’m fine,” John said, smiling blankly and waving her in. “Just fine.”

“I think the stairs were a bad idea,” she said. “Oh goodness. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t even worry about it,” he said, and kept breathing until the graininess went out of his vision. He made it to the kitchen and leaned as nonchalantly as he could manage on the counter. He jerked his head toward the coffeemaker. “Cup of coffee?”

“I would love one,” she said, “um, but would you like to sit down a moment first?”

John shook his head slowly. “Naw, I’m better off if I keep movin’.” His blood pressure must be really low, though, because he was feeling listless and queasy. Still, he managed to power through putting on half a pot of coffee to brew, and dragged himself over to one of the chairs at the kitchen table to sit heavily as the dizziness subsided into a dull headache. 

She was watching him, her fine brows drawn together a little in concern. “You’re sure,” she said. 

“I’m sure about a lot of things,” John said, collecting himself. He glanced at his watch. “Yeah, Rodney shouldn’t be long. He’s, um, he’s been kinda lookin’ after me since I got home from the hospital.” 

Carter was far too polite to ask, but raised her eyebrows, and John supposed there wasn’t any reason not to tell her. “I got shot,” he explained. “Wrong place, wrong time, convenience store holdup. I don’t have much local family, and Rodney and I were kinda friends before, so he’s just been hanging around to make sure I don’t die. I’m close to recovered, it’s just a slow process.”

“Ooh,” she said, wincing in sympathy. “That doesn’t sound fun.”

John nodded. “It isn’t,” he said, whole-hearted. He waved a hand. “Enough about that. Rodney said he works on deep-space telemetry. You in on that business, then?”

She nodded. “Yes,” she said, “more or less. Most of it’s classified, of course. You know how that kind of thing is.”

“I know _exactly_ how that kind of thing is,” John said a little darkly. That meant “deep space telemetry” was a euphemism for satellite missile targeting or surveillance systems, most likely. He’d sort of figured. Christ almighty his head hurt. 

“Oh really,” she said. She stood up. “Where are your cups? I’ll pour the coffee.”

 He looked at her under the hand he was using to squeeze at his temples in a futile attempt to drown out the headache. “Second cupboard from the sink,” he said, gesturing. “Thanks. Give it a sec, the machine always gurgles at the end and it hasn’t yet.”

“Sure,” she said, with a winning smile. “So you’ve known Rodney since he moved in here?”

“Sorta,” John said. She opened the wrong cupboard, then the right one, and John wondered if that were on purpose, if she was kinda casing the joint. She looked at the mugs for a moment. “I mean, he didn’t exactly introduce himself around. There wasn’t a housewarming party. I ran into him around October or so. I work pretty weird hours, so I dunno how long he’d lived here then.”

Carter pulled out the blue Air Force mug and looked at it for a moment, then dug deeper and pulled out the Kandahar one, stared at it, and turned around, holding it up quizzically. “Kandahar,” she said. 

The pain in John’s head receded enough that he raised his head and gave her a lopsided grin and half-salute. “I served almost ten years,” he said. “Got out as a major about three years ago. I was a pilot, mostly, did some covert ops stuff and at the end I was one of the first Combat Recovery Officers.”

“Really,” Carter said, intensely perky in a way that did little to conceal her razor-sharp focus on him. 

“Yes ma’am,” he said. 

“Did you go to the Air Force Academy?” she asked. 

“No, ma’am,” he said. “I did ROTC.” 

“What year were you commissioned?” she asked. 

“Nineteen ninety-two,” he said. “I just missed the Gulf War.”

“Ahh,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m older than you, then. I logged over a hundred hours in enemy airspace in that one.” 

“Pilot,” he said, interested. They were making more women pilots now, even had women fighter pilots, which was about damn time, but there weren’t many his age or older. 

“Oh, yes,” she said. “F-16s.” 

“Me too,” he said, sitting forward, headache forgotten. “Except by the time I was flying them in Southern Watch it was boring as fuck. There was some excitement up in the Balkans but,” he waved his hand dismissively. “A friend talked me into switching to choppers.”

“I’m trained to fly a couple types of helicopter,” Carter said, “but I never really got into it. I also have a doctorate in astrophysics so I got transferred to this program I’m on with Rodney pretty much right away after the first Gulf War— and how sad is it, might I add, that we have to put a number on it now?”

“Real fuckin’ sad,” John said. “I been back to Iraq, before I got out. No thanks.”

“Right?” she said. She shook her head. “I haven’t been doing much flying since ’94, but I keep my hand in. Mostly I do math now.”

“A shame,” John said. The coffeemaker gurgled and she carefully eased out the carafe to pour into the two incriminating mugs. “Not a lot of chicks flyin’. It was gettin’ better when I left but I can’t imagine the shit you must’ve dealt with, all this time.”

“I’ve gotten pretty good at filtering that kind of thing out,” she said with a thin smile. “Cream’s in the fridge?”

“Top shelf, toward the left,” John said. “And the sugar bowl is on the counter next to the paper towel holder.” He shook his head. “Some host I am.”

“Some guest I am,” Carter said, “dropping in unannounced and looking for someone else.”

That managed to wring a laugh out of John, and he sat back feeling a little more at-ease. His headache was almost gone. Probably another couple of weeks before he’d be up to any kind of exercise. He was gonna go stir-crazy. 

He picked his phone up from the table. There was a text on it from Rodney, an entire screen full of text that made John’s eyes cross. It boiled down to not being able to find ricotta cheese and freaking out about it. He sighed and flipped his phone back shut after reading the follow-up message. “Yeah, Rodney’ll be back any time now, unless we gotta mount a recovery operation.”

“Sounds like you’d be the guy for that,” Carter said. 

“I’m outta that line of work,” John said. “Yeah, one sugar’s fine. Thanks.” He pushed to his feet. “Let’s move to the living room, these chairs aren’t that comfortable.”

Carter settled onto the edge of the chair, and John sat on the couch. Cosmo skulked out from under the couch, where she was hiding, and crawled up beside him, peering suspiciously at Carter. John petted her, and made much of formally introducing her to Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Cosmo,” Carter said, eyes sparkling with good humor. 

“This is actually Rodney’s cat,” John said. “For some reason after I got hurt he decided, I dunno, I needed more supervision, so he brought her up. She likes my apartment better. So does he, apparently, even though his is way nicer. That’s his laptop, one of ‘em, over there.” He pointed to the recliner. 

“Fascinating,” Carter said, blinking. 

“Yeah, I dunno,” John said. “I’m pretty fond of the guy by now, but it took a bit. He kinda grows on you. And you gotta overlook the first few massively insulting things he says until you get the hang of him. I didn’t speak to him for two months once, but I kinda got over it.”

“I’m familiar with his brand of charm,” Carter said. 

“First he asked if I was a stripper,” John said, “and I got over that one, I’ve heard that joke before, but then he expressed an apparently sincere belief that I provide sexual favors for money, and I kinda got mad at that one.”

“He called me a dumb blonde and nearly got one of my friends killed, and _did_ get me injured, in an equipment malfunction,” Carter put in. “He also said something really condescending about my… bosom. That got him banished to Siberia but I’ve sort of made peace with him via remote communications.”

John stared at her over the edge of his cup (he’d gotten the Air Force one). “Only Rodney,” he said in a moment, rolling his eyes a little, “could manage to be condescending about tits.”

“Exactly,” Carter said drily. 

“Siberia seems pretty harsh, though,” John said. “Especially if you’ve gotten that kind of shit before. Or was he exceptionally bad about it?”

“Oh,” Carter said, “Siberia wasn’t my choice. Somebody had to go, though, and actually it was the nearly getting my friend killed that prompted my superiors to decide it would be Rodney who got to go. He did fine for a while over there, but they probably should’ve recalled him after the first year instead of sending him back after the second crisis consult. Two years was too long a rotation. But that wasn’t my call.” She seemed a little hesitant, a little defensive, though she was hiding it well. A sudden certainty congealed in John’s gut, that something bad had happened to Rodney in Siberia. 

“He doesn’t speak fondly of it,” John said, re-analyzing past interactions with Rodney in a new light. The guy babbled about himself occasionally but mostly was pretty subdued about it. In playing video games and in other moments of distraction, it was like another, brighter personality facet shone through. That and the few comments about drugs, and the occasional glimpses John had caught of the literal handful of pills Rodney swallowed in the morning, gave him a sinking feeling. 

“It wasn’t a great environment,” Carter said. “It’s kind of why we let him telecommute now. Nobody else has his expertise, and we badly want to keep him on the project, but he absolutely refused to spend any more time working in a secure facility. He said something about the total absence of windows, and it’s become a running joke. He said what he liked best here was the view, so I’ve got to admit I’m a little surprised. I figured he had a big yard, or something, not that he looked out onto a busy street.”

“He likes watching people go by,” John said, more pieces slotting into place. “He and Cosmo. I knew he lived here because of the twitching curtains, though honestly I’d assumed he was a lady in her seventies at least, because what thirtysomething man has lace curtains?”

Carter laughed. “I hadn’t really expected anything about this whole scenario,” she said. 

“He had a nervous breakdown, didn’t he,” John said, not changing his tone. “In Siberia. That’s why he’s back here, isn’t it?”

Carter looked at him over her cup of coffee, lowering it to rest it in her lap, both hands wrapping around it. “The details are actually classified,” she said, “besides medical privacy laws. What makes you ask that?”

“He’s never said a word about it,” John said, “but what thirtysomething guy gets a new lease on life from watching a busy street through lace curtains?” He set his coffee cup down on the side table, angry. She’d almost lulled him into confidence, with the being funny and the woman pilot thing and all, but it sounded like his first assessment was correct: Danger. “Where are you banishing him to now? Is that what you’ve come here for?” God damn it, he wouldn’t lose Rodney.

Carter shook her head, solemn. “No, Major,” she said, “he’s not being banished anywhere, or recalled. I’m just here to check in.”

“I’m not a major anymore,” John said. He’d heard a car pull in a moment ago, and now he heard the front door. The tenants who lived in the rear apartment used the back door, so that meant one thing. “That’ll be Rodney, coming up the front stairs now.” He shoved to his feet with an effort, setting his coffee cup down, and made his way into the kitchen, intending to warn Rodney before he saw Carter. 

Rodney came through the door in full cry. “— the way people drive around here, honestly,” he was already saying, halfway through the sentence before he got the door open, “it’s a miracle there aren’t more vehicular homicides— ah, you’re awake, excellent. Do you know what the statistics are on road rage incidents in this metro area? I would imagine they must be astronomical. I ask you—“ He set the shopping bags down on the counter and turned, hands on hips, to look at John. 

“Rodney,” John tried, but he might as well not have spoken.

“— You know that roundabout, by the music hall? Some jackass just decided to go around and around and around it like it was some sort of party game or something. He had to have been drunk!” Rodney gestured wildly. 

“Why were you on that street at all?” John asked, confused. It wasn’t on the route between here and the grocery store, unless he’d gotten lost. Well, he’d probably gotten lost. Rodney wasn’t a great navigator. But Rodney hadn’t even stopped talking to hear his response.

“Who gets drunk at ten a.m. on a Tuesday? Your degenerate townspeople, that’s who,” Rodney concluded, then leaned in and cupped the nape of John’s neck with his big hand, drawing him down to kiss him briefly but soundly on the mouth (John closed his eyes despite himself), and then turned back to the counter. “It’s enough to make me want a beer at— what time is it now, eleven? Not even— on a Tuesday morning. I didn’t buy any, unfortunately. How much longer are you on those pills?”

“Rodney,” John said again, lips tingling. Well, he wasn’t in the Air Force anymore, so it really didn’t matter that a lieutenant colonel had just seen Rodney plant one on him, but his ears still got hot. Guess that solved the question of being out or not.

“When you’re off them we’ll have to have a good drink,” Rodney said. “I don’t think I’ve had a drop since Christmas.”

“ _Rodney_ ,” John said much more insistently, feeling himself getting a little bug-eyed. 

“You know, McKay, I think I actually missed you,” Carter said, leaning in the doorway from the living room. Rodney froze and stared at her with a comical open-mouthed expression. John rolled his eyes before stepping in a little closer— Carter’s voice had gone a little honeyed and playful and it pinged all his jealous tendencies something fierce. 

“Why didn’t you tell me she was here?” Rodney sputtered, recovering. 

“I was trying,” John said. He grabbed Rodney’s hands and pried the carton of eggs out of one of them before they wound up propelled somewhere by the force of Rodney’s gestures. 

“It’s not the G—uh— _thing_ again, is it?” Rodney asked, and it was more than his occasional stutter, it was a word he’d swallowed back. He looked alarmed, like _really_ alarmed, and John started to bristle. 

“No,” Carter said, “it’s not.” 

“Then what?” Rodney asked suspiciously, lifting his chin in a posture John recognized as defensive. His eyes were wide in what looked like actual fear, setting off all John’s protective instincts in a jangle. He was acutely aware of the gun holstered at his lower back, and how completely inadequate it was going to be to any kind of situation that Rodney’s fear could possibly indicate.

“I just came to check up on you,” she said. “We have some projects coming up we’re really gonna need your help with, and I wanted to see for myself that you were doing okay.” 

Rodney hesitated, disbelief and suspicion written all over his face. “You came all this way,” he said. 

“You know it didn’t take me long,” Carter said, smiling oddly. She gestured. “Anyway. Looks like you’re doing pretty well here. Settled in nicely.”

“I like it,” Rodney said. He was very transparently waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Carter let out a breath, shoulders slumping a little. “They sent me because your output had kinda dropped,” she said, with the air of someone admitting something. “They were worried you were relapsing.”

“I’m fine,” Rodney said, prickly, but some of the tension went out of him, too; he had been expecting an ulterior motive, John rather thought, and was much relieved to have a relatively innocuous one exposed. John relaxed minutely, still alert and suspicious but less actively worried. “I’ve been distracted.”

“I see that now,” Carter said gently, smiling a little as she shot John a look.

John rubbed the back of his neck. “I been takin’ up a lot of his time,” he said. “I’m almost better.”

“Oh,” Carter said, “we’re not upset. I’m quite pleased, actually.”

“Pleased,” Rodney said suspiciously. 

Carter gestured around the room. “I expected you to be hiding in a closet or something,” she said. “Living off noodles. Your only social interactions video games. But here you are instead, buying health food at the gourmet grocery store, and lovingly tending to your heroically injured super-hot boyfriend. I’m gonna need photographic proof because nobody’s gonna believe me when I report back.” She shook her head, amused. “You’re doing awesome, Rodney. I’m serious, nobody’s gonna believe me.”

Rodney drew himself up. “I,” he began, but deflated immediately. “He is really hot, isn’t he,” he said instead, so adorably smug John wanted to smack him. Or kiss him. Too close to call.

“Hey,” John said, a little behind on the conversation. 

“Very,” Carter said. “I mean,” she backpedaled, glancing at John who realized he was glowering. “I don’t mean to be insulting to you, Rodney; part of my surprise at least is that I didn’t know you were gay.”

“Bisexual is a valid identity,” Rodney said, a little huffy. John started putting the perishables into the fridge, to escape some of the discomfort.

“Oh,” Carter said, “yes, of course it is, believe me, I know that, but I just didn’t expect it of you.”

“Have you _noticed_ how his ass looks in jeans?” Rodney said. “You don’t have to be very high on the Kinsey scale to find that irresistible.”

John turned his head to give Rodney a dirty look, and realized that Carter was actually _looking at his ass_. Along with Rodney. “Hey!” he said, turning to flatten his back against the counter. “Jesus! Are you animals?”

Carter bit her lip and looked sidelong at Rodney, who had lifted his chin defiantly. “There is nothing ignoble in desire,” he said. 

“I’m not a piece of goddamn meat,” John grumbled, without any real ire. Rodney was entitled to make those sorts of comments, and that sort of made the whole situation easier to take. 

 Carter shrugged. “I’m a scientist,” she said. “I have to make observations.”

“Yeah, yeah,” John said. He gave her a calculating once-over, and said, “So do you have classified stuff you have to talk about, or what?”

“Kind of,” Carter said. 

“Cosmo and I can go down to your place,” John said. “You stay here where the coffee’s on, and I’ll finish up the laundry down there.”

“You can’t lift heavy things yet,” Rodney said. 

“I won’t,” John said. “I’ll leave the baskets on the floor.”

Rodney looked at Carter, who made a face John couldn’t parse. “Yeah,” Rodney said finally, “I know. And he can cook, too.”

“Animals,” John said, and went in to retrieve Cosmo from his bed. She settled into his arms, purring— she liked being carried around— and he tapped the bulge of his phone in his pocket as he went past Rodney, letting him know he was easily reached. Rodney nodded, looking utterly unconcerned, and that relative ease was enough to let John head down the stairs without further worry.

 

 

He started another load of laundry, and sat on the recently-vacuumed living room floor to fold the stuff out of the dryer, turning on a movie (non-pornographic) for background noise. It didn’t take long, so he took the laundry basket and went in to Rodney’s room and cleared out some of the floordrobe, as much as he could without overtaxing himself. That took care of most of the clutter in Rodney’s bedroom, though he did let himself snoop a little bit until he finally found Rodney’s sex toys. John wasn’t real knowledgeable about those kinds of things; he’d been away frequently enough during their marriage for Nancy to amass a reasonable collection, but most of hers weren’t exactly unisex. Rodney did have a solitary, utilitarian-looking dildo, of modestly reasonable size, as well as a very esoteric-looking complex gadget that John figured probably vibrated somehow. He didn’t touch anything, leaving it undisturbed lest Rodney catch on that he’d been snooping. He did ascertain that Rodney had a reasonable supply of condoms and lube, and felt a little guilty for checking and being satisfied to notice that the seal on the condom box was unbroken.

Curiosity satisfied, John sorted the last of the dirty laundry into lights and darks, watched a little bit of the movie, and started to wonder what they could still be talking about up there. Carter was pretty hot, and pretty much Rodney’s type, going by his straight porn. But John hadn’t gotten the vibe from her that she’d be particularly interested in helping Rodney cheat on him, despite that early ping on John’s jealousy instincts. He resolved not to worry about it, for now. But the movie was abruptly not enough to keep him distracted. He still was a little tingly with repressed protective instincts, and only the knowledge that if she tried to abduct him or something she’d have to pass by this apartment’s door kept him from lurking in the hallway trying to spy.

So he opened the door to the spare room, and surveyed the mess for a moment. It was mostly just cardboard boxes and things, not unpacked yet from Rodney’s move. Some of the boxes were heavy-duty plastic cases, the kind you used to transport fragile high-tech things. John wandered through the room, poking into various containers— mostly, they were books, some computer parts, some gadgets and things. He opened one of the plastic cases and was rewarded with a disassembled high-tech… _thing_ , each component carefully cradled in cutout foam. He poked it desultorily, wondering what it could possibly be for. It wasn’t aviation-related, that much John could tell, but beyond that, he’d no idea.

He closed the case, and opened another, really curious now. This one had several small objects carefully arranged in the cutout foam, with careful little paper tags attached with thin cotton string. Accession numbers? Like a museum? Surely not, surely they were something to do with the satellites Rodney was involved with, or the missile targeting systems or whatever it was. 

One of the objects was a bronze-colored sphere with glass insets and complex overlapping layers of metal, almost like circuitry. It was ornamented with blocky decorations, incised almost like printed lettering, and John peered closer at it, wondering; surely they weren’t decorations, they had to be functional. He moved his hand closer to it, and it thrummed, deep in his bones, not quite a physical sensation: suddenly he had to touch it, like it was crucial that he touch it. Before he really processed what he was doing, he had picked it up and had it cradled in both hands, near his chest. 

He stared down at it for a long moment, feeling as though he were being warmed from the inside. It was— it felt really good. He carried it back out into the living room and sat down on the couch to look at it in the light from the window. 

It was warm, and something inside it was spinning, and he wondered what it was for. The wonder turned to a sensation like he was mentally being nudged, and in response, he thought, _yes_.

Light came out of the little glass insets, and coalesced into a hologram in front of his face, swirling lights and colors. John stared at it in wonder, and after a moment it solidified into a… a star chart, or a map, or something. John thought perhaps he recognized it, but as he looked it shifted and he realized he had just made it into a map of what he had thought he’d recognized— the general layout of the Great Lakes. Something was off about it, and he peered curiously at it. 

He heard the door opening too late to put the thing back where he found it, so when Rodney and Carter came in, they caught him red-handed, sitting on the couch with Rodney’s weird map-projection-device in his hands, and a zoomed-out schematic of Earth floating in front of him.

“What the hell are you doing?” Rodney asked, staring blankly. 

“Um,” John said guiltily, “I was just, I was going through the spare room a bit, mostly just taking stock…” Both Rodney and Carter seemed so taken-aback and shocked that he realized the thing he was holding was almost definitely classified and he really, really, really, really wasn’t supposed to have touched it. _Off,_ he thought frantically, and the map disappeared. “The case this was in was open,” he said defensively (and untruthfully). “I just, it looked cool.” He trailed off; they were still staring in shock. He got up. “I’ll put it back, jeez,” he said. “We can pretend I didn’t see it.”

“Wait,” Carter said, sounding strangled. She edged around Rodney, who seemed frozen in place, and looked down at the thing he was holding. “Can I see that?”

John glanced over at Rodney, who was uninformatively blank, then shrugged and handed the thing over. It didn’t light up or anything when Carter held it, not even when she turned it over. “How did you turn this on?” she asked. 

John blinked at her. “Um,” he said. “I just kind of, um.” He held out his hand. “Here, I’ll show you.”

She handed it back, and he held it and felt the thing inside start to spin. “There,” he said, “once it’s spinning like that,” he hesitated, and there was the feeling, “you just kind of give it a…” He trailed off as it lit up, showing a schematic this time that looked like a mechanical diagram of its own construction. It was labeled, recognizably, but the writing for the labels was the same kind of weird blocky machine-like script that adorned it. “Okay, it sounds crazy when I say it like that.”

“A mental push?” Carter asked. 

“Yeah,” John said, a little sheepish, and handed the thing back to her. It went immediately dark. “What did you do?” he asked, puzzled. 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Rodney said finally, and collapsed dramatically onto the couch. “Jesus— Jesus fucking Christ.”

“How far had you gotten with it?” Carter asked. 

“I knew it had moving parts,” Rodney said hollowly. 

John looked from Rodney to Carter, and back. She shook her head wonderingly, and handed him the object, which shivered back to life and displayed its schematics again, scrolling rapidly through views until it had a diagram that clearly showed the interlocking mechanisms inside that moved. “I thought he was some kind of genius,” John said to Carter, jerking his head at Rodney. 

“He is,” Carter said. “He’s one of the leading experts in the world on this kind of technology. But he lacks one crucial component, which most of us lack: the ability to make the stuff _work_.”

“That’s pretty crucial,” John said. Then it struck him. “Wait, if he’s an expert and can’t make it work, why does it light up for me?”

“There’s a genetic component,” Carter said. 

John squinted at her. “What kind of damn fool technology has a _genetic component_ to making it work?”

“It used to be a common gene,” Carter said. “Now it’s vanishingly rare. The odds of you having it are astronomically against, although,” and she cracked a smile here, “I would have said the odds of Rodney McKay having a hot boyfriend were so astronomically against that I suppose the fact that you have this incredibly rare gene is just icing, really.”

“He’s hot,” Rodney said faintly, “he cooks, he cleans, he has a huge dick, and he has the goddamn fucking Ancient gene.”

“You hit the jackpot,” Carter said. 

“Hey,” John said, ears going hot. His dick was a perfectly reasonable size, he had on very good authority. “My dick’s not any bigger than yours.”

Carter finally colored a little at that, and laughed. “Don’t compare them,” she said. “I’ll take your word for it.” 

The hologram had shifted and was blinking something, and John got a feeling of incompleteness. He looked at the blinking text, and said, “I think it’s broken.”

Carter squinted. “I think it’s asking for data inputs,” she said. “It’s supposed to be interfaced with different, hm…”

Rodney finally came un-paralyzed and came over. “Database input,” he said. “It’s supposed to have additional data crystals. Hm!” 

“Here,” John said, suddenly uncomfortable at being pinned in a corner by a pair of really intent scientists. He shoved the thing at Rodney, thinking _c’mon, stay on_ at it. 

Rodney took it carefully. “Wait,” he said, “wait, wait,” but then it didn’t shut off, and he stared at it incredulously. 

“I told it not to turn off,” John said. 

“You…” Rodney trailed off, then turned to look at Carter. 

“Jack describes it that way too,” she said. “When he uses it. He says you just sort of think at it, and if it’s working, it usually gets your drift.” 

She was giving John a calculating look that he was betting probably wasn’t about his cooking, cleaning, or the way he filled out his jeans. It made him a little bit uncomfortable. He went into the kitchen and found that Cosmo was on the counter, so he removed her. Delighted, she climbed up to his shoulder, rubbing against his face and kneading happily at his sweatshirt. He carried her back out to the living room, hovering cautiously in the doorway and watching the two scientists talk excitedly over one another at the object. 

“I dunno, Cosmo,” he said. She purred and mashed him in the face with her forehead, narrowly missing his nose, the way she sometimes did when she was happy. Abruptly he was tired, so he sat on the couch and petted her, wishing Rodney wasn’t standing quite so close or becoming quite so animated with the hot geeky chick. 

Cosmo was in utter bliss, happy to be paid attention to, and kneaded his sweatshirt exuberantly. John could kind of see the point of why people had cats. He’d always sort of figured he’d be more a dog person, but she was doing a damn fine job at distracting him from being nervous and jealous about this Carter person. 

It made no goddamn sense to have genetically-activated technology using a gene nobody had. And when it came down to it, how the hell did it know he had this gene? It wasn’t like he’d given it a blood sample. It had to be modern technology, but why wouldn’t Rodney know what it did, in that case? “Too many questions, Cosmo,” he sighed. 

Rodney appeared suddenly at his elbow, holding another of the objects John had seen in the padded case. “Touch this,” he said. 

“Buy me dinner first,” John said, quirking an eyebrow at him, but he took the object in the hand that wasn’t supporting Cosmo. It tingled a little, and he sneezed abruptly. “Guh! That’s broken,” he said, and shoved it back at Rodney. 

Cosmo was offended by the sneeze, and jumped down from his arms, complaining. Rodney took the object back and turned it over in his hands. “It’s broken,” he said. “What makes you say that?”

“I dunno,” John said. “It kind of, it tingles.”

“This changes everything,” Carter said. “It really does, Rodney.”

John pushed unevenly to his feet. “Listen,” he said, “I know this shit is classified, so my dozens of questions can’t be answered, but it’s making me nervous as hell. I used to have top secret clearance and I was never this fucking sloppy about it unless it was a trap. So quit waving this shit around in front of me. I’ve got too much to lose to fuck around in things this far over my head.”

“I’ll cut to the chase,” Carter said. “What made you leave the Air Force?”

“My wife,” John said. “She gave me a choice between her and the Air Force, so I chose her, but then she divorced me anyway.”

Carter winced. “That sucks,” she said. “Would you go back?”

“I’m thirty-five and just had my spleen shot out,” John said drily. “I doubt they’d want me.” 

“You’d be surprised,” she said. “There’s only three or four people in the world who can use that technology you just activated.”

He gave her a long, calculating look. She didn’t seem like she was joking. “I quit so I wouldn’t get shot quite so much,” he put in.

“I see that’s working out for you,” Carter said. Yeah, that was kind of a good point.

“What would a deep-space telemetry project want with a washed-up retired pilot in suboptimal health whose service record you haven’t read?” John scrunched up his face, regarding her.

“We’d have to talk about that,” she said. “But if you were a Combat Recovery Officer you had to have known your shit.” Which was also a really good point. 

“It’d make it kinda difficult for me to spend the two weekends a month I’m supposed to with my son,” he said. “He’s the reason I chose the wife over the Air Force, I should mention.”

“We can work around that,” she said. “You’d be surprised.” She shrugged, and gestured at him. “I can’t promise it’s any safer than what you do now, but, it doesn’t look like you’d be missing out on much.”

John squinted at her. “What about the part where I’m a big ol’ homo?”

Carter smirked. “I assure you,” she said, “that’s not something my department is in the slightest bit worried about.”

John stared at her. “I don’t know,” he said. “I do know that kind of personnel decision’s above the pay grade of a lieutenant colonel.”

“You’re not wrong,” Carter said, “except in this case.”

“You have made some odder hiring decisions,” Rodney put in. 

“You don’t have to come back as an officer,” Carter said. “You could be a civilian consultant.”

“That’s not my hang-up,” John said. “My hang-up is that I still don’t know what the hell this all is about.”

“We can’t tell you unless you sign up,” Carter said, a little apologetically. “I know, I know. Listen, I know this is all really sudden, and you in the condition you’re in.” She pulled a small case out of her uniform pocket and extracted a card, which she handed to him. “Think it over. I’ll send Rodney a packet with what he’s allowed to tell you for recruitment purposes, and he can talk to you about it. We’ll take it from there.”

John took the card, glancing briefly at it. Phone number, email address, no physical address. Interesting. He stuck it into the breast pocket of his shirt. “Okay,” he said slowly. "I'll think about it."

 


	14. Always Check Your Shoes For Camel Spiders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bunch of connecting scenes, in which Sam Carter and Daniel Jackson discuss serious matters, Rodney does the usual act that makes his girlfriends break up with him but really doesn't faze John, many things are discussed, and John does slightly butch things to make up for all the mushiness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this is a short sort of dry update of all the interstitial scenes. And I've changed the ages of Rachel's children, which may or may not be important.
> 
> But don't say I don't do anything for y'all. I had to Google what kind of scary bugs live in Afghanistan. The answer is, ALL OF THEM. I dunno if I'd rather face a deathstalker scorpion, a camel spider, or an Iratus bug. I doubt John's phobia of bugs started with that Iratus incident. It probably just got a hell of a lot worse.
> 
> (I did steal the shoe mannerism from my Vietnam infantry vet dad, who has been checking his shoes for scorpions religiously for 47 years now. There are no scorpions in our climate, but it did come in handy once when as a panicked teenager I flailed a wolf spider the size of a silver dollar out of my hair into his work boot, where it still was the next morning. OGOD I just freaked myself out. I'm not real scared of bugs but when they're big enough to have conversations with I start to have objections.)

 

“Huh,” Sam said, from behind her screen. 

“What?” Daniel asked, blinking. She’d spoken a moment before, and he’d sort of grunted in answer, but he’d been reading. He’d made his notes and closed the book, now, and was letting it sink in for a moment. 

“Huh,” she said again. 

“What are you looking at?” he asked. She glanced up at him. 

“I just told you,” she said. She looked back down at her screen, and a small smile crossed her features. “Weren’t listening, were you.”

“Uh,” Daniel said, looking shifty. “No.”

She laughed and shook her head. “I checked up on Rodney McKay, remember him?”

“No,” Daniel said. 

“C’mon,” Sam said. “Ancient tech expert, helped us with the gate when Apophis tried to blow it up, etc.?”

“Oh yeah,” Daniel said. He frowned. “He was a tool.”

“Yeah,” she said, “but he’s good at what he does. And he’s sort of okay once you get used to him. So he’s working for us remotely, at the moment, and his response times got really slow and his output dropped kind of a lot. So we thought maybe he was having trouble or something. He’s had some… issues in the past. So I popped over to see what he was up to.”

“Okay,” Daniel said, trying not to be too obvious about wondering when this story was going to get interesting. Sam’s amused expression suggested that she’d picked up on that already, though. 

“So it turns out he’s found himself a super-hot boyfriend,” Sam said. “And the guy recently got injured, and Rodney was taking care of him while he recuperated.”

Daniel’s eyebrows went up. “He cares for somebody,” he said. “I sort of didn’t figure he had friends.”

“Well,” Sam said. “He has one, at least. Guy’s a cop, it turns out, and he got shot in a convenience store holdup, and is just recovering. He’s nice enough, I chatted with him a while, he’s ex-Air Force.”

“Oh,” Daniel said. “Interesting.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Sam said. “So we kinda bonded over that. He was a CRO, that’s pretty intense.” At Daniel’s blank look she said, “CROs, they’re with the pararescuemen? Like, craziest of the crazy Air Force special ops, they’re the ones that parachute in to rescue stranded servicemen. The training’s insane, the fatality rate is ridiculous, you have to be crazy to do it.”

“Hm,” Daniel said. “Is that why he’s ex?”

Sam made a wry face. “Well, I figured I’d look him up, and there’s definitely a story there. But. That’s not the most interesting thing about him.”

“No?” Daniel perked up, at that. Sam wouldn’t just be telling him this to gossip.

“No,” Sam said. “So. He lives upstairs from Rodney, and when I showed up, Rodney had stepped out to run an errand, so he invited me up for coffee in his apartment while we waited. After Rodney showed up, he left us in his apartment to talk about whatever we had to talk about— correctly surmising it was classified— and went downstairs to Rodney’s place. Where he apparently got bored and started poking through Rodney’s projects. I think he was trying to tidy the place up, it was a bit cluttered.”

“Oh dear,” Daniel said. “Did he zap himself with something or cause a security breach?”

“No,” Sam said. “He picked up one of the Ancient devices we sent Rodney to take apart since Jack couldn’t turn them on. And he turned it on, Daniel.”

“He turned it… he has the gene?” Daniel sat up, at that. 

“He has an incredibly strong expression of the gene,” Sam said, “and a natural facility for using it. I mean, incredible, Daniel. He just picked this thing up and turned it on and poked through it and told us exactly what it was for and what it did. We tried with another device and he told us right away that it was broken and how. I mean… he really has an amazing grasp of the tech.”

“Holy shit,” Daniel said. 

“Yeah,” Sam said. “So, I mean, I offered him a job on the spot. But he’s got a young child and he’s still on pretty heavy painkillers and he’s sort of paranoid about something, and I didn’t want to pressure him, so I figured I’d come back here and research him and leave him to think it over.”

“Holy shit,” Daniel said. “So McKay just… found this guy?”

“Yes,” Sam said. “Completely at random.” She shook her head. “So I’m looking over his service record and, Daniel, he’s perfect. He’s flown pretty much every kind of aircraft there is, he’s repeatedly decorated for valor, he’s trained in diving and parachuting and free-climbing, he has advanced marksman qualifications, he’s a gifted natural athlete, he’s tested very high on IQ tests, he’s got an advanced degree in mathematics— I mean, if I were to fill out a wish list for a guy to have on an SG team this guy pretty much hits every point. He even has a relatively clean psych profile. His only flaw is that he’s sort of too smart to take orders sometimes.”

“Wow,” Daniel said. He made a face, at that. “We don’t know anybody like that.”

“Right?” Sam laughed. “The only issue is that he’s gay, but I kind of can’t see anyone actually objecting to that. Not least because he’s gay with McKay, which means I get harassed a lot less. And according to McKay, he also cooks, cleans, and is gifted in the bedroom.”

Daniel snorted out a guffaw at that, shaking his head. “I really wouldn’t have guessed McKay was gay,” he said, “but then, I barely interacted with the man.”

Sam shrugged. “I guess he’s bi,” she said. “Not like it matters.”

“If the SGC objected to the gays we’d be in a lot of trouble,” Daniel said. 

“He could pretty much be a puppy-murderer and if he has the gene, we’re not going to object,” Sam said. She looked up then, looked appalled, and added hastily, “not that I’m equating homosexuality with the murder of adorable animals or even anything bad at all. It’s just still against regulations.”

“Wait, it is?” Daniel frowned. “Whose?”

“The US military,” Sam said, eyebrow raised. 

“Really?” Daniel was honestly surprised. “I guess I remember that… I thought we got rid of that, but I guess not. It’s not illegal, right? You just can’t ask anybody.”

“Or tell,” Sam said. “So. If we get this Sheppard character to come back to the Air Force, he’d have to agree to not make a big deal out of it anywhere outsiders could see. But I mean, he’d basically be living his life on top secret lockdown anyway, so it doesn’t matter. And if he’s not cool with that, we can take him as a civilian. There are no rules against that, at all.”

 

 

 

 

 

Rodney spent the whole afternoon and evening cataloguing all the functions of the device John had unlocked, absorbed in a fervor of discovery. He was too captivated by it to really process anything that had happened. John tried to pry him away from it for dinner, but he kept meaning to stop and then finding out one more thing that led to another revelation, and eventually a plate of food turned up by his elbow. 

It was around two in the morning before he finally surfaced enough to realize that he’d been working for twelve solid hours and really should probably make sure Cosmo was fed and… oh. Hm. Make sure John wasn’t annoyed. This was the longest he’d gone without seeing to John since he’d found him on the stairs. 

Cosmo wasn’t in his apartment. He spent a good little while looking for her, first ascertaining that John wasn’t in his bed either (damn it, that would have been easiest). There were no notes or other indications from John that he’d attempted to communicate, but Rodney did have a nagging, vague memory of John’s voice a few times. It had penetrated enough of his fog of fascination to make him grunt absent replies, but he couldn’t remember any actual words. So, hm. This was usually the part where he lost girlfriends, because they realized no matter how into them he seemed, he was way more into whatever project was occupying him at the moment. It wasn’t on purpose, it was just how his brain worked. 

He went up to John’s apartment and hesitated there. Should he go in, or let it go, or what? He tried the knob and found it unlocked (he didn’t have a key for John’s door, he had realized about a split second before he tried the door), so he let himself in. 

The apartment was dark and quiet, lit only by streetlights through the windows. He eased softly through the kitchen into the living room. About halfway through the living room, he heard a distinctive thump, and in a moment Cosmo appeared to investigate. She recognized him and twined around his ankles, muttering cheerfully, heedless of the danger. She never had caught on that humans couldn’t see in the dark, and likewise seemed to have no concept of how the human gait worked, which led to a remarkable talent for getting kicked. Rodney picked her up, and she squeaked at him, but settled happily against his shoulder, bonking her head on his face. The surface of her fur was warm, really warm, and it was obvious she’d been snuggled up to John.

Rodney stood in the doorway of the bedroom, considering his options. He could hear John breathing, slow and shallow, deeply asleep. Should he go in and just get in bed with John? He hadn’t been invited. But it would be weird not to join him. Or would it? Maybe he should just take his cat and go. But that would be weird too, when John woke up and Cosmo was gone— it would be obvious, then, that Rodney had come and gone, and that would perhaps be weird and creepy. And yet, if he left Cosmo here, she was awake now and would probably be annoyed at his desertion so she’d make a lot of noise and wake John up.

She was purring loudly, nestled against his neck as he dithered. He really had no idea what to do.  

John breathed in sharply, then yawned, and the blankets rustled as he turned over. “Hey,” he said hoarsely. “You just gonna stand there?”

“I, um,” Rodney said, “well—“

“C’mere,” John said. 

Well. That answered that. 

Rodney dumped Cosmo onto the bed, shucked his pants and shirt, and climbed in. John yawned, sighed, and snuggled backward until he was snug against Rodney’s chest. He was wearing a t-shirt. Rodney slipped his arm around John’s waist, careful to keep from pressing against any damaged areas, and kissed the only thing he could reach, which was the back of John’s head. 

“Mm,” John said. 

Rodney tried to think of something clever to say, maybe an apology for getting so wrapped up in his work, but before he could settle on anything, John’s breathing evened out again and he was asleep. That settled that, and in a moment Rodney joined him. 

 

 

 

John was gone when Rodney woke up. So was Cosmo. There was coffee, still hot, reasonably freshly brewed, so Rodney fixed himself a cup and wandered down to his apartment. John was folding laundry.

“There you are,” Rodney said. 

John looked at his watch. “You didn’t sleep long,” he said. Rodney checked the microwave clock. Seven. 

“Like five hours,” he said. “That’s plenty. I have two PhDs, I’m used to a lot less than that.” 

“That interesting, huh?” John paused in his folding, and petted Cosmo, who was curled on the couch next to him in maximum-cuteness position, with her head upside-down and her paws tucked up. 

“Fascinating,” Rodney said. “I’m not quite to the point where I can reverse-engineer it but I definitely understand what most of the circuit pathways are for. It’s the most I’ve learned about this technology in one sitting since my first couple of days on the project like, ten years ago.”

“Good,” John said. 

Rodney came and sat next to him. He wanted to go and get back to it, but he wanted to talk to John first, wanted to maybe touch him. “Are you okay?” he asked. 

“Why wouldn’t I be?” John answered. 

“You got shot,” Rodney said. “And then I ignored you for an entire day. I know you tried to ask me something, and I meant to pause and listen to you, but I was just so caught up in it.”

“I figured,” John said wryly. “It’s all right, don’t worry about it. I’m healed enough I can fend for myself. You did notice I made you dinner, right? You must have, I found the empty dish just now. Unless Cosmo ate it.”

“Yes,” Rodney said. “Oh! Yes. It, um, it was great.” He remembered eating but he honestly couldn’t have said what it had been.

John laughed. “I bet,” he said. “Hey, listen. If you can’t get away today for the doctor’s appointment or tonight for dinner I can try to figure something else out. I called Nancy yesterday and she’s not gonna make it tonight. She really wanted to, but she has a work thing she can’t get out of.”

“Oh,” Rodney said, “no, I’ll come with you. I might— I’ll try to remember it’s important. Give me like, an hour’s notice so I can take some time to, y’know, surface.”

John nodded. “Will do,” he said. 

“Oh,” Rodney said. “What should I wear? Is this a big— this is a big deal, isn’t it?”

“It’s not exactly formal,” John said. “I’m going to wear decent jeans and a button-down. Don’t show up in your PJs but it’s not like you gotta wear a suit.”

“Khakis and a reasonable polo shirt?” Rodney asked. 

“Sure,” John said. He indicated one of the piles of folded laundry. “You got both in that pile.”

“Oh,” Rodney said. “You did my laundry?”

“I washed everything that was dirty,” John said. “I counted most of what was on the floor as dirty.”

Rodney stood up and went to look in his bedroom door. “Oh my God,” he said. He hadn’t realized John had done that. “You cleaned my room.”

“I was bored,” John said. 

Rodney came back into the living room and stood looking down at John. “I don’t deserve you,” he said. 

John laughed. “C’mere a sec,” he said, shifting over a little on the couch. Rodney squeezed into the space this left, and set his coffee down on the side table. John fitted one hand around the edge of Rodney’s jaw and tugged him in to kiss him, gentle and sweet. 

It was, Rodney thought dimly, almost an unbearably awesome confluence of events, that he had this person in his life now, and this person was so amazing, and it made it perfectly clear that all Rodney’s past relationship failures were just because he hadn’t been as into them as he’d thought, because this, _this_ was what it felt like to be into somebody, and this staggeringly incredible feeling was what it felt like to have someone be that into you back.

The grammar to express that eluded him, so instead he put everything he had into kissing John, stopping only when he felt that telltale hitch in John’s posture that meant he’d strained some injured part. Rodney pulled back, dismayed, but John grinned at him, and God his mouth was beautiful, and in the morning light from the windows his eyes were a luminous shade of green. Rodney stared at him dumbstruck for a moment. 

“That was a proper good morning,” John said. “You gonna go get right back into it, or do we have time to eat something?”

“When’s your doctor’s appointment?” Rodney asked, collecting himself a little bit. Right. Real world. He couldn’t ravish John all day in the real world. But what was really mind-boggling was that he got to ravish John _sometimes_ in the real world. 

“Eleven,” John said. “I bet Rachel’s free, I could get her to take me. Want me to find out?”

Rodney thought about it. “And dinner’s when?”

“We’d have to leave here around 3 to pick Joey up,” John said. “And we wouldn’t be home until probably ten, once we’ve dropped him off again.”

“If Rachel could do it, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” he said. “I just…”

“If you’re so behind they’re sending lieutenant colonels to check up on you,” John said, “it’s probably for the best if I don’t take up quite so much of your time. Anyway it’s not a big deal, I just need some more stitches out.” He pulled his phone out of his hoodie pocket and started to key in a text message.

“They didn’t send her because of her rank,” Rodney said, “they sent her because she’s one of the few people I’d listen to.” He retrieved his coffee and sat holding it for a moment. John looked thoughtful, or perhaps a little worried. “So, um. What did you think of her offer?”

“I can’t go back to the Air Force,” John said. “I know she said it wouldn’t be a problem but I just don’t see how the hell it’s not going to take me away from Joey. I can’t leave this city.”

“You don’t have to re-enlist,” Rodney said. “They don’t need you to fly helicopters.”

John made a wry face, looking away. “That was the only part of the Air Force I really liked,” he said. “I miss the sky, I miss it so bad it’s like burning, but I don’t miss the homesickness and the haircuts and getting yelled at by people who just want you properly subservient.”

“John,” Rodney said, “they want you so badly they’ll pretty much let you do whatever you want. As long as you do your human lightswitch act and touch the things they want touched.”

John didn’t seem to have a snappy answer for that. He finished and sent his text message, closed his phone, and put the phone back into his pocket. “Listen,” he said, with the air of one reluctant to speak. “I don’t, um— I know how classified stuff works. I know what kind of thing ‘deep space telemetry’ is code for. I know that the only reason you’d need to reverse-engineer advanced technology is if it’s stolen. So even though I don’t really know anything about anything, I know damn well that what you’re involved in is pretty covert shit. That’s the kind of thing that gets assassins sent to your house, and I don’t believe they have you out here with it without some kind of security. They’ve got to be watching you closer than it looks like.”

Rodney blinked. “Actually,” he said, pained, “it’s not,” but he didn’t know what else to say, because of course John was off-base because, of course, this was all so incredibly classified.

“Don’t tell me anything,” John said, cutting him off. “I’ve been around this block before. They’ve come after me before, and when they ambushed me and dragged me out of my house they took Nancy too, okay, to use her as leverage to get me to talk. That was before Joey. It was bad enough. Nancy’s a big girl and it was partly her quick thinking that got us out of that one alive. But now there’s Joey. He’s way more vulnerable than Nancy was. And this is higher-stakes, I’m betting.” He shook his head. “So my choice becomes seeing him and knowing I’m exposing him to danger, or never seeing him and hoping nobody knows he’s my pressure point. I’m not gonna live like that, Rodney. I don’t care what magic touch I have, my kid’s going to have a father.”

Rodney’s mouth moved before his brain caught up, and he said, “Wait, you think they’re watching me?”

“Rodney!” John said. “You have highly covert stolen technology in unlocked boxes in your spare bedroom. If you don’t think this place is under surveillance of some sort 24/7 I think I’m gonna have to revoke your genius card.”

“It’s not like that,” Rodney said. “Listen, John, it’s not at all like what you’re thinking. This technology isn’t stolen.”

“I don’t want to know,” John said. “I don’t want to know. All I know about it is that it’s powerful, and that means people want it.”

“Nobody knows about it,” Rodney said. 

“You’re wrong,” John said. “I don’t care how sure you are, you’re wrong, because that’s not how the world works. There is always someone who knows.”

Rodney thought guiltily of the Trust, thought of the warnings he’d gotten, and how little attention he’d paid them. It was dangerous, yeah, but the likelihood of them seeking him out were so low— nothing he had was sensitive, nothing he had was important. He was just trying to figure out the way the technology worked, not how to use it. He only had the broken stuff O’Neill hadn’t been able to turn on. 

That was certainly different, now that he had a gene carrier. And maybe only Sam Carter knew it, but she’d have to tell someone. And he’d learned in Russia that once two people know, you no longer know how many people know.

“Carter was going to send me a brief,” Rodney said. “With what I can tell you that’s not sensitive, but so you’ll understand. I promise, it’s not what you think it is, and if—“

“I don’t want to know,” John said. He wasn’t at all the same man who’d just been kissing Rodney. He was all cold intensity now, and it was unnerving. “I really don’t, Rodney. I’m done talking about this.”

Rodney stared at him, taken aback. He’d screwed this up, and he had no idea how he could’ve avoided it. Pushing it further wouldn’t help. He’d wait to hear from Sam, then. He closed his mouth and nodded. 

 

 

 

 

“Thanks a million for doin’ this,” John said as he got into Rachel’s car. Her son Thomas was at school, but her daughter Monica was in her car seat in the back, fast asleep. John craned his neck to look at her a moment. He would never, ever, ever breathe this to anyone, but he’d kind of always wanted a daughter and had been a little disappointed when Joey was a boy. He didn’t know why, really, but sometimes he got broody and wished for another baby, and when he let himself think about it, it was always a girl. 

Rachel laughed at him; she was probably the only person who had any inkling about it. Monica had him wrapped around all ten of her tiny fingers and he indulged her ridiculously. “You know I don’t mind,” she said. “You look so much better!”

“Few days of healin’ works wonders,” John said. “I can pretty much eat normally, if I’m careful. Rodney’s taken pretty good care of me.”

“You said he was busy with work today?” Rachel watched traffic for a break, then went for it like a maniac. She drove even more aggressively than John did, and he drove like an experienced fighter pilot. It was pretty impressive. 

“Yeah,” John said. “They, um, they actually sent someone to check up on him, because his productivity had dropped so much.” He grimaced. “I don’t think he got in trouble, though, at least. I think they were worried he was sick, I guess he’s been sick before.”

“Never thought about it,” Rachel said, “but I guess you got no way to check up on remote workers. He doesn’t have family out here, though?”

John shook his head. “No,” he said. 

“Then why’d he pick this city, of all the places to live?” Rachel asked. 

“Dunno,” John said. 

She laughed. “Bet you’re glad he did,” she said. 

“Yeah,” John said, suddenly overtaken with a mixture of wonderment and sincerity.

 

 

 

John came back from his doctor’s appointment quiet and sort of grouchy. Rodney took a lunch break then, and went up to John’s apartment. John was lying loosely curled on the couch, looking so tired and wan Rodney had to sit by his head and stroke his hair back from his face. “Are you all right?” he asked. 

“Hurts,” John said.

“Sorry,” Rodney said. “Could you eat?”

John closed his eyes. “I should,” he said. 

“How about a sandwich,” Rodney said. “I could grill you a cheese.”

John managed a half-smile. “Grill me a cheese,” he said. 

He had to wake John up to make him eat it. John managed about half the sandwich and a big glass of water, then Rodney made him go to bed. 

Rodney’s phone buzzed at 2. He ignored it until it buzzed again, and again, and again, and finally it connected to his brain and he looked at it and it was a series of text messages from John. DON’T FORGET, they all said, until the last one that said _do not make me walk down these stairs_. Shit, it was 2:30. _Yes okay got it_ , Rodney texted back. He saved all his projects, updated to the server, and hurriedly showered, shaved, combed his hair, and put on clean presentable clothes. Holy crap, John had folded his khakis straight out of the dryer so that they had a crease down the front. Rodney surveyed himself in the full-length mirror on the bedroom door. He looked like a catalogue model. 

Oh well, that was as good as it got, for him. He hurried up the stairs and found John standing over the bathroom sink, door open, staring blankly at the mirror. “Hey,” Rodney said, and John didn’t react. He went in and stood behind him, looking past him at the mirror. John looked grim and tired. Rodney put his arms around him and pressed his face against the back of his shoulder. 

“John,” he said. “It’ll be okay.”

“Yeah,” John said, looking down. It seemed to work to break the spell, and John came out of the bathroom and sat at the kitchen table to put his shoes on. He was wearing boots, sensible given that there was snow on the ground.

He dumped each shoe upside down and rapped the heel before putting his foot in, and Rodney watched him curiously. “Why do you do that?” he asked finally. 

“Do what?” John asked, distracted. 

“The upside-down-shoes thing,” Rodney said. 

John looked up. “Camel spiders,” he said. 

“What?”

“Deathstalker scorpions,” John went on. “Black widows the size of your thumb.”

“I don’t,” Rodney said, and stopped in confusion.

“I’ve either dumped all those things out of my own boots, or seen them dumped out of other people’s,” John said. “You ever seen a scorpion sting? I have. No thanks.” He straightened up painfully, grimacing. 

“There aren’t scorpions around here,” Rodney said, a little uncertainly. 

“No,” John said. “Afghanistan, though. The ground-pounders would make the spiders and scorpions fight each other when they got bored.” He looked up at Rodney and grinned. “We do have black widows around here, though. So I figure, it’s a good habit to keep. Ever seen a brown recluse bite? I have. No thanks!”

“There aren’t brown recluses here,” Rodney said uncertainly, fighting the impulse to climb onto a chair. He had no idea what their native range was. That was about the only great thing about Siberia— no bugs, really.

“Not usually, no,” John said. “They’re mean fuckers, though.”

“I may never wear shoes again,” Rodney said faintly.

John grinned. “Just check ‘em before you put ‘em on,” he said. “Avoid unpleasant surprises.”

“I think if I dumped my shoe upside down and a giant spider fell out I’d probably die immediately of a heart attack,” Rodney said.

John held out his hand and Rodney pulled him to his feet. John stepped in, slid an arm around Rodney’s back, and dropped a kiss onto his mouth gently. “I’d squoosh it for you,” he said, utterly sincere. “I hate bugs.”

“My knight in shining armor,” Rodney said. “I can never squish spiders. I just leave the room. One time I didn’t go into my kitchen for a week because I saw a spider in there.”

John laughed and ran his thumb gently along Rodney’s lower lip. “C’mon,” he said, and tilted his head at the door. 


	15. Basic Newtonian Physics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The long-awaited dinner party. 
> 
> _Adele turned to him after they had left the room and said, “Is that man really going to teach my daughter how to build nuclear bombs?”  
>  “He probably won’t…” John said, but trailed off, realizing that Rodney might well do just that. _
> 
> Only half the dinner party. The rest to come soon, but it was getting long.

 

 

Rodney made a fair bit of money, himself. He’d sort of assumed he wasn’t easily impressed by wealth. But as he drove along the endless winding driveway of the Sheppard estate, he was starting to realize he hadn’t at all grasped the true scope of just how wealthy John’s family was. The driveway was lined with enormous old trees, imposing even in their winter nakedness, and here and there stood a line of white fence, the kind you used for horses. Finally the house came into view, surrounded by a cluster of outbuildings. It was an enormous house, stately and imposing. 

“Holy shit,” Rodney said. 

“That’s a swear!” Joey crowed cheerfully. He’d gotten a great deal less shy with continued exposure to Rodney over the last 45 minutes or so of riding in his car.

“So it is,” John said, drily amused. 

“Sorry,” Rodney said. “I’m bad at this.”

John reached over and put his hand on Rodney’s knee. “You’re fine,” he said. 

He parked where John directed him to, and stood next to the car nervously while John got Joey out. John moved as if to pick Joey up, but remembered at the last moment not to, and instead took the boy’s hand. “You remember your cousin PJ,” John said. 

“Maybe,” Joey said doubtfully. 

“You’ll remember him when you see him,” John said. 

The door— a huge oak door like nothing Rodney had ever seen on someone’s house— swung open, and a sandy-haired man with a strong jaw stood there, a small dark-haired boy peering around him. “John,” the man said.

“Hey, Dave,” John said. He jerked his head at Rodney. “This is my buddy Rodney. Rodney, my brother Dave.”

“Hi,” Rodney said. 

“You remember Joey,” Dave said to the boy peering around him. Joey had drawn closer to John, equally shy. 

“That’s PJ,” John said. “We haven’t seen him in a long time.”

“Come on in,” Dave said, and Rodney trailed behind John and the still-hiding Joey.

PJ had a much darker complexion than Dave, and dark eyes, but he bore a remarkable resemblance to Joey despite the difference in coloring. The two boys regarded one another solemnly around their fathers, who shook hands with much more formality than Rodney had expected from siblings. Dave then shook Rodney’s hand with about the same amount of warmth.

“I have all the Star Wars legos,” PJ said. “Wanna see?”

“Yeah!” Joey said, and let go of John, instantly over his shyness. 

“C’mon,” PJ said, and the two of them ran off down the hallway. 

“That was easy,” John said. 

“He’s been talking about showing his things to Joey for days,” Dave said. “I think he’d forgotten about him.” He turned back to John. “Are you okay? That news clip was horrifying.”

John shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said. “I can’t believe they put crap like that on the air.”

“Well,” Dave said, “the bit where you subdued the armed robber was pretty cool. You did look pretty good in that part.”

“Wait,” Rodney said, “you subdued the armed robber?”

“You haven’t seen the clip?” Dave looked at him. “Wow. You really should.”

John shook his head. “I don’t wanna see it,” he said. 

Dave led them down a hallway, and Rodney followed self-consciously. John’s posture was stiff, tense; either he was overdue for pain medication or he was inwardly freaking out. Rodney rather suspected the latter, and it was making him nervous. 

“John!” a woman exclaimed, stepping out of a doorway. She was slim, tall, and dark-skinned, stylishly turned out from a short fashionable haircut to an outfit Rodney was patently unqualified to evaluate (all sleek, tailored lines and bright colors) to a pair of very high-heeled shoes. She held out her hands, striding effortlessly forward on those incredible shoes, but stopped short of actually touching John, hands hovering uncertainly. “I knew you must be here, I just saw a PJ-shaped streak go by with another little boy that _must_ be Joey. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Adele,” John said, and his smile went a little more genuine. “Happy birthday.”

She embraced him carefully, hands on shoulders, and managed to make the stuffy upper-class cheek-buss actually look affectionate, pressing her cheek to John’s, gold earrings flying. “It is so good to see you,” she said. “This might be the nicest present I’ve gotten today.” She held him by the shoulders at arm’s length, looking at him with her head tilted. “I think it’s been _years_ , John.” But there was no note of chiding in her voice. 

“You know how it is,” he said. 

She released him and turned to Rodney expectantly. John caught the cue smoothly and said, “This is my neighbor and good friend Rodney McKay. He’s an astrophysicist and, of all the coincidences, he works for the Air Force.”

Adele shook Rodney’s hand, smiling warmly. “Oh my,” she said. “Astrophysics! I feel like that must be a fairly intimate field. Do you all know each other?”

“Actually, sort of,” Rodney said. 

“Have you met Neil DeGrasse Tyson, then?” she asked. “I’ve always wondered about him.”

Rodney scowled. “He’s stolen at least two ideas from me,” he said. 

“Has he,” Adele said, delighted. “Were they good ideas?”

“Of course they were,” Rodney said, drawing himself up. “They were mine.”

“Rodney’s some kind of genius,” John said, fondly enough that Rodney knew he wasn’t imagining it, and it was enough to derail him from his planned rant. 

“Really,” Dave said. 

“But it’s all classified,” John went on, “so even I don’t have any idea what it’s all about.”

Rodney tilted his head. “True,” he said. 

“Come on,” Adele said, “let’s go see where the kids went. I want to see Joey. He must be quite big by now.”

“Six in November,” John said. “Pretty big for his age.”

Rodney trailed them down the hall as they chattered about their children’s various achievements (PJ was seven and a half and in an accelerated reading program. Rodney had started calculus at that age. He really wasn’t sure what was normal). 

Dave walked next to him, and looked over at him curiously. “You known John long?” he asked. 

“No,” Rodney said, “I just moved into his building late last year. But near-death tends to put things into perspective.”

“Near death,” Dave said. 

“He sustained an abdominal gunshot wound,” Rodney said. “That sort of thing is nontrivial.”

“He looks pretty good to me,” Dave said. 

“He looks better than he is,” Rodney said. “I found him passed out on the stairs last Thursday. He’d taken a taxi home from the hospital.”

“Good heavens,” Dave said, but after a moment said, “I don’t suppose I’m all that surprised. John has never been the poster child for self-preservation instincts.”

That really seemed unfair, but Rodney had no idea how to address it. “Well,” he said, “he’s a good healer, fortunately, so it’s a moot point at this juncture.”

“Thank God for that,” Dave said genially, and gestured Rodney in the doorway after John and Adele. 

They were in a formal parlor, beautifully appointed in dark wood and heavy textiles in shades of rich reds and dark gold, with oak-paneled walls and heavy draperies framing large windows looking out across a sweeping lawn. A silver-haired man with the same heavy jaw as Dave was sitting in a wing-back chair with Joey on his knee and PJ standing at the arm of the chair, both boys raptly intent on a model airplane he was holding. 

Rodney nearly ran into John’s back. John had stopped short, shoulders high and square, chin up, and even from behind him and to one side Rodney could see the muscles in his jaw bunch up. 

“Johnny, boy,” the silver-haired man said, extending one arm out to the side as if to encompass the room. “So good to see you.”

John swallowed hard. “Hi, Dad,” he said, voice completely loose and drawling, sounding utterly at ease, but his back didn’t loosen one whit. 

Patrick put his hand on Joey’s back, urging him to go, and Joey hopped off his lap and ran to his father with the plane they’d been looking at. “Grandpa says this was yours too,” he said. 

John smiled tightly at him, and tousled his hair. “Did he say what kind of plane that one is?”

Joey shook his head. PJ came over too, hovering a little shyly. John took the plane and turned it over in his hands. “This one’s a P-40 Warhawk,” he said. 

“It has teeth,” PJ said, tracing the tiny nose art with his finger. 

“The ground crews painted them up,” John said, “for luck. Nowadays we paint teeth on the A-10 Warthogs instead. Shark Mouth, they call it.”

“My Daddy was a pilot,” Joey said proudly to PJ. 

PJ looked up at John, wide-eyed. “Cool,” he breathed. 

Patrick had approached, and was standing a few paces away. “I got outta that line of work,” John said to PJ, “because I figured it was too dangerous.”

“Dad said you got shot with a _gun_ ,” PJ said. 

“I did,” John said. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Can we see the bullet hole?” PJ asked. 

“PJ!” Adele said, scandalized. 

“I’m afraid I can’t take the bandage off yet,” John said, “but if you really think you won’t be grossed-out, maybe later I’ll show you the scar from another time I got shot, when I was a pilot. That one’s healed now.”

“Can we see it now?” PJ asked, jumping up and down a little. 

“Yeah,” Joey said, “can we see it now?”

John laughed and tousled Joey’s hair. “You’ve seen it, buddy. It’s not all that exciting. Not right now, I haven’t said hi to Grandpa yet.” He pulled Joey in against his hip and extended his hand to his father. “How’s things, Dad?”

“Things are fine,” Patrick said, shaking his hand. Was that really how this family greeted one another? John released his hand and half-turned, gesturing to Rodney with the hand that wasn’t wrapped around Joey’s shoulder.

“This is my friend, Dr. Rodney McKay, who isn’t a medical doctor at all but is the kind of doctor who studies outer space,” John said, and Rodney caught on a little belatedly that the explanation was undoubtedly more for PJ’s benefit than Patrick’s. 

“Outer space like aliens and stuff?” PJ asked. 

“Um,” Rodney said. Patrick stepped forward and shook Rodney’s hand, and Rodney returned the handshake firmly and a little nervously. The man really didn’t look evil, he looked solid and late-middle-aged and prosperous. He didn’t look like John in the slightest, but he and Dave resembled one another strongly. “Astrophysics,” Rodney said, a little feebly. “And mechanical engineering. Not really so much with the aliens.” It was unexpectedly difficult to lie to a seven-year-old boy with wide bright eyes and an eager expression, especially not when the truth was so cool. If the Trust ever got prepubescent kids working for it Rodney was so screwed. 

He didn’t even _like_ kids. _Damn_ Sheppard, he’d created this vulnerability.

“Where’s Elise?” Adele asked. 

“Oh,” Patrick said, “she’s probably snuck off to the library.”

“My little bookworm,” Adele said, beaming. “I’ll be right back.”

“Would you care for a drink?” Patrick asked, moving to the sideboard. There were crystal decanters and matching highball glasses, a stainless steel and leather cocktail set with an ice bucket and immaculate linen napkins, and Rodney sort of boggled at the entire production. He’d only ever seen a setup like that in the movies. 

“I can’t,” John said, “I’m still on antibiotics.”

“I’m driving,” Rodney said automatically. 

“You’ll be here for hours yet,” Patrick pointed out. 

“Oh, right,” Rodney said. “Well. Um, what’ve you got?”

 

Rodney settled onto the couch with some Canadian whiskey in honor of his heritage, and John sat beside him with a plain soda water with ice in it. Joey crawled into John’s lap, and PJ climbed up on his other side and jostled his injured side repeatedly jockeying for position with Joey as they looked at the model airplane. John didn’t flinch, but Rodney could see his knuckles go white on his cut glass highball glass with each little-boy attack. 

Adele came back with a gangly girl of ten or twelve (Rodney had no idea how one told such things), one of a matched set with PJ, sharing his dark coloring and bright eyes. She had hair in two braids tied with ribbon, and an outfit with a plaid skirt that kind of looked like a school uniform. She was clutching a heavy leather-bound book and had the glassy-eyed look of someone who had been quite absorbed in their reading— Rodney recognized it from himself. 

“Hi, Uncle John,” the girl said dutifully, presenting herself in front of him with the air of someone performing a requested task. 

“Hey, Elise,” John said. He jostled Joey a little bit. “Joey, do you remember your cousin Elise at all?”

“No,” Joey said, distracted. 

“I don’t remember you either,” she said honestly. She turned her gaze, a little keener now that she’d shaken off the book, onto Rodney. “Mom says you’re a scientist,” she said. “Science is my favorite subject but they won’t put me into the accelerated class.”

“What grade are you in?” Rodney asked. 

“Fifth grade,” Elise answered, eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“In sixth grade I built a non-working model of a nuclear bomb,” Rodney said. “It would have worked if I’d found a source for plutonium.”

Elise’s eyes narrowed even further, then darted over to John. John shrugged. She looked back at Rodney. “Prove it,” she said. 

“He studies outer space,” PJ put in helpfully. “He says not aliens but I think he’s lying.”

Elise considered him further. “Do you need nuclear bombs to fight aliens?” she asked. 

“No,” Rodney lied a little desperately, trying to think of a way to get off that topic. It was true, he personally didn’t need nuclear bombs to fight aliens, it wasn’t his department. “I didn’t wind up going into nuclear engineering. I haven’t built a nuclear bomb since undergrad. I still do study alternative energy sources like that sometimes, but mostly, uh, satellite telescopes and things.”

Elise looked thoughtful. “I still don’t think I believe that you could build a nuclear bomb,” she said. 

“Give me a pen and paper,” Rodney said. She blinked at him. He snapped his fingers. “C’mon.”

John laughed. “Are you really gonna,” he said, but PJ elbowed him again and he swallowed whatever else he was going to say.

Rodney got up. “Show me this library,” he said. “And PJ, stop sticking your elbow in John’s gunshot wound, he’s going to drop his drink.”

He followed Elise out of the room, ignoring the adults’ odd looks, and down the hallway. She was still clutching the heavy book to her chest, and shot him odd looks from time to time. “My math teacher says I don’t have good enough algebra to take accelerated science,” she said. “Everyone else in my class is still just figuring out how to solve for X and I’m already doing functions but she says I’m not ahead by enough to do high school math, but I really want to. I wanna take physics, but they won’t let me in the class.”

“They gave my sister trouble when she wanted to skip grades too,” Rodney said. “More trouble than they gave me. They all accused her of copying my work. I won’t say she never did, but she was as gifted a physicist as I was, or nearly so. But they didn’t let her graduate high school until she was sixteen. I graduated at fourteen.”

“Mom says I can’t skip any grades,” Elise said. “She says my social development is just as important as my academic achievements.” 

Rodney snorted. “Well,” he said, “that’s a bunch of hooey.” 

“That’s what _I_ said!” Elise pouted fiercely. She pushed open a heavy oak door and led Rodney into a room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a large oak table in the center of the room, and actual rolling ladders. The table was scattered with notebooks, and Rodney pulled one over and looked at it. It was covered in neat schoolgirlish handwriting, laying out a series of basic equations and their corresponding graphs. She wasn’t lying, they were in fact functions. 

“Hm,” he said, and set his whiskey glass down. “Have they started you on transcendental functions yet?”

 

 

 

John watched Rodney go, bemused. Adele turned to him after they had left the room and said, “Is that man really going to teach my daughter how to build nuclear bombs?”

“He probably won’t…” John said, but trailed off, realizing that Rodney might well do just that. Adele was one of the sharpest people he’d ever met, so it stood to reason Elise would be smart enough to learn. “Well,” he hedged, “I mean, she doesn’t have any plutonium either, so it’s probably not dangerous even if he does.”

“Is he for real?” Dave asked, amused. He’d been talking about something with Patrick, and John had assumed he wasn’t paying attention, but Dave was pretty good at looking dumber than he was and usually was paying a whole lot more attention than he let on. 

“Oh,” John said, “Rodney’s nothing if not utterly genuine.”

“You said he works for the Air Force?” Dave asked. 

“I highly doubt that the Air Force has the guy who builds their nuclear bombs work remotely from his living room in the apartment below mine,” John said.

“You’d be surprised,” Dave said. He came over and sat next to John. “C’mere, PJ.”

PJ climbed down, mercifully not putting any more pressure on John’s battered abdomen, and curled up in Dave’s lap instead. “As long as they’re done in time for dinner,” Adele sighed. 

“I wanna fly planes,” PJ said. 

“My Daddy flew helicopters,” Joey said.

PJturned and looked at John. “Cool,” he breathed. 

“As long-term career plans go,” John said, mindful of Dave’s mild air of disapproval, “it’s not great, but I’m not going to lie and tell you helicopters aren’t totally awesome.”

“I’ve ridden in a helicopter,” PJ said. “It was really cool.”

“I never have,” Joey said, a little crestfallen. 

“Yes you have,” John said. “You were really little, though. I bet you don’t remember.”

“Oh,” Joey said. “No.”

A beeping noise made John look up. Adele had just taken a picture of them, all together on the couch. “Patrick,” she said, “go and stand behind them, I want a photo. Three generations of Sheppard men. It’ll make a nice picture.”

John made himself look pleasantly neutral, but the awareness of his father standing behind him made the space between his shoulder blades tingle. He had to act normal or his dad would have the moral high ground and convince Dave he was insane. He really, really, really wished he could drink. 

The camera beeped and Adele looked at the back of it and beamed. “Lovely,” she said. “Oh, I’m just so glad you’re here, John. I’ll have to get a picture of everybody all together later.”

“That would be great,” Patrick said warmly. He came and sat down in the armchair next to the couch. “So John. How’s your investment portfolio?”

John smiled thinly. _God_ , he wished he could drink.

 

 

 

“— Once you have the basics of normal physics down,” Rodney said, “then you can get into whole concept of relativity. It’s beneficial to have a solid foundation first, though.”

“Okay,” Elise said. She shook her head. “Why did they make it out like this is all so mysterious? It’s complicated but it’s not hard.”

“No,” Rodney said, “it’s not hard at all. It’s fascinating.”

“When you’re fascinated by stuff, it’s easy to concentrate enough to understand it,” John said drily. Rodney looked over to see him standing, hip propped against the edge of the table, and he was so pretty Rodney actually forgot about the physics equations in front of him for a moment. 

“Hey,” Rodney said, unable to keep his face from stretching into a smile. He got to touch this guy, got to kiss him sometimes, and he didn’t have to imagine what he looked like underneath that artfully-rumpled white linen button-down shirt because he regularly got to see him naked. 

John looked tired and Rodney suddenly remembered that part of the reason he was here was to protect John from his family. “How’s it going?” Rodney asked, grimacing. 

John half-rolled his eyes and did an elaborate thing with his eyebrows. “Dave and Dad took the boys out to look at horses,” he said. “They seemed surprised that I didn’t feel up to hiking through the muddy pastures. Joey’s going to come back covered in mud but I’m not particularly worried. We can put down newspaper to spare your car interior if it’s that bad.”

“Dave seemed astonished when I mentioned that an abdominal gunshot wound is no trivial matter,” Rodney said. “I hate to say it, but Elise is the only member of your family whose brains I’m particularly impressed with.”

John snorted, and dropped into the seat next to Rodney. “Well,” he said. “That’s not saying much. You’re not impressed with very many people’s brains.” He pointed at Elise. “I knew you were a smart cookie, though.”

“They won’t let me take physics yet,” she said. “And Mom won’t let me skip a grade.”

“She’s right,” John said. “You don’t want to skip a grade.”

“Surely my academic advancement is more important than my social development,” Elise said.

John shook his head. “You don’t want to skip a grade,” he said. “You have time to take school as it comes. There’s no prize for finishing early.”

“I went to college when I was fourteen,” Rodney said. 

“And you had a good time?” John asked. He looked very tired, Rodney thought. Maybe coming here had been a bad idea.

“I wasn’t there for a good time,” Rodney said loftily. “I was there for an education.”

“That’s what I think,” Elise said. “I’m not in school to make friends. I’m in school to learn things. If I want to make friends I’ll join a club or something.”

“I skipped sixth grade,” John said. “And so I was the smallest kid in my class the rest of school. And they beat the hell out of me, Rodney.” He shook his head. “I would rather have graduated high school at eighteen than just barely seventeen, and had some kind of normal life up to that point.”

Rodney stared at him. “Really?” 

“I was a scrawny little geek,” John said. “It was awful.” He pointed at Elise. “Your dad was worse than useless. He egged the bullies on. Don’t you ever do that to your brother, Elise. Your job is to protect him.”

Elise looked shocked. “I would never,” she said. “PJ is a pain in the ass but I’m the only one who gets to beat him up.”

“Thank you,” John said. “Good.”

Rodney was still staring at John. He really couldn’t envision John as a skinny little geek. He couldn’t see him as anything less than he was. “ _I_ was a scrawny little geek,” Rodney said. “But my sister was littler than me, so I had to look out for her, and it wasn’t easy.”

“At least I only had me to worry about,” John said wryly. “I just don’t understand how kids can be so cruel.”

“Grown-ups are too,” Rodney said. “It didn’t stop when I got to college, or even grad school.”

“I got the worst of it in college, when I showed up and was still a kid,” John said. “I filled out once I’d had a semester or so of ROTC, and then people left me sort of alone.”

“But it would be different for a girl,” Elise reasoned. “It doesn’t matter how big you are if you’re a girl.”

“Sometimes it’s worse for girls, though,” Rodney admitted. “Jeannie had a lot of trouble.”

Elise looked from one of them to the other, stricken. “But I just want to learn physics,” she said. “And nobody will let me. I’m not interested in stupid makeup and stupid boys and stupid American history.”

“You don’t have to learn physics in school,” Rodney said. “I’ll teach you physics. Give me your email address. Surely you have one.”

John came over and slouched into the chair next to Rodney, pulling over the equation sheet. “Are you really teaching her physics?” he asked. He skimmed the page, and to Rodney’s surprise, picked up the pencil and crossed something out. “Rodney, I think your basics are rusty.” He corrected a formula, and Rodney snatched the paper back to look at it.

“My basics are not rusty,” he said. “You’re just high on pain meds.” But, sure enough, John was right; he’d transposed two of the symbols in one of his equations.

“I know I’m right,” John said. 

Rodney regarded him suspiciously. “Why do you know so much about physics?” he asked. 

John looked briefly skyward. “They don’t go around throwing pilots’ licenses at people,” he said. “And I didn’t major in criminal justice.” He smirked as he pulled the notebook back over and worked through one of the example problems Rodney had sketched out and abandoned during his lecture. 

Rodney realized he was staring, and swallowed hard. “Well,” he said. 

“I didn’t know you were smart, Uncle John,” Elise said. 

“I’m no genius, but I do all right,” John said absently. He bit his lips in concentration and Rodney had to make himself look away so he didn’t jump on him and take him right there. God, up against the bookshelf, tear the buttons right off that shirt— god _damn_ it, he wasn’t thinking about that, but now that the thought had crossed his mind he could almost taste John’s mouth, almost feel the heat of his body. 

“You haven’t built a bomb yet, have you?” Adele asked from the door. 

“I’m learning physics,” Elise said, delighted. 

“We haven’t gotten to nuclear physics yet,” Rodney said, wrenching himself back under control. “We’re just starting with basic Newtonian. Although,” he craned his neck, “John seems to be diverging into fluid dynamics.”

“It’s cool,” John mumbled, still absorbed in what he was doing. “I like it.”

“Elise tests very high in all the aptitude tests,” Adele said, coming over and ruffling Elise’s hair, “but I’m hesitant about allowing her to focus too intently on academics yet. She’s only eleven.”

“I started my undergrad degree at fourteen,” Rodney said. 

“Don’t skip grades,” John said. “I did and it was awful. Don’t do it. Do extracurriculars or something if you need help staying interested.”

Adele looked at him thoughtfully, then over at Rodney. “Do you feel the same way?” she asked. 

“I turned out just fine,” Rodney said. John looked at him, rueful and fond. “Fine,” Rodney said, “okay, no, it really wasn’t any fun. But I just wanted to learn so bad. It meant I had time to get two PhDs before the CIA headhunted me.”

“Uncle John says Dad didn’t protect him from bullies,” Elise said. “That’s wrong. I would never let bullies hurt PJ. Beating him up is my job and my job only.”

“Aw I’m not bein’ a tattletale,” John said uncomfortably. “It was a long time ago. I think Dave’s probably grown up a lot since then.”

“Dave did a lot of growing up rather late,” Adele said. “It doesn’t really surprise me that he treated you like that, John. When I met him he was still very… unformed. He had the makings of a good man, but he wasn’t yet. It took a long time for me to reciprocate his interest in me.”

Elise looked troubled. “I thought you guys fell in love at first sight,” she said. 

“Perhaps he did,” Adele said. She pulled out the chair and sat down next to her daughter. “And I liked him a great deal, but I was not going to entrust my heart to him until he grew up.”

“He’s not stupid, though,” John said. “He never was. I’m glad he finally put it to some use.”

“I used to love physics,” Adele said. John slid the notebook over to her, and she tilted her head, narrowing her eyes as she considered the equations there. “Oh! I think I remember some of this.”

 

“There you are,” Dave said from the doorway, and they all looked up. “What is this, a nerd convention?”

“Physics,” Elise said, her smile nearly incandescent. 

“Did you lose the boys?” John asked, brow quirked in lazy amusement, but Rodney could see the tension in his neck, his uneasiness at Joey being away from him most likely. 

“Oh,” Dave said, “Patrick’s trying to knock some of the mud off of them.” 

John pushed back from the table, slouchy and lackadaisical, and the muscle in his jaw bunched and flexed as he kept the indolent expression on his face by main force. “Did they make a mess?” he asked. 

“No,” Dave said, “it’s okay,” and Rodney thought maybe that was the first indication he’d witnessed that Dave was really John’s brother and maybe knew him at all. 

“Dinner soon?” John asked, sauntering over toward the door. 

“Yeah,” Dave said, “just about time.” He jerked his head, gesturing down the hallway. “Shall we go rescue Patrick from the mud-monsters?”

“Let’s,” John drawled. Rodney watched him go, concerned enough over him that he only sort of absently noted the way John’s thighs curved in his khakis. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I stole Adele's name from some other fic I read somewhere long ago (sorry, whoever that was, I don't remember anything except liking the story), stole PJ's name and age from toomuchplor's How Not To Fly, and am sort of awkwardly aware that I am repeating world-building notes between the two alternate universes I'm working on at the same time. But they keep being relevant! 
> 
>  
> 
> Also I might be projecting in this one a bit too. I did badly in math in high school and was consequently barred from taking physics, and have never really gotten over it. It's basically magic to me, a closed book, and it is a tremendous source of regret, but I really do have a math learning disability so the odds of me overcoming that and teaching myself any kind of physics are pretty astronomically against. I WILL LIVE VICARIOUSLY THROUGH YOU, ELISE. Except you're too young to spy on your hot uncle and his nerdy boyfriend making out. NEVER MIND, ELISE.


	16. Manners

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rodney's never actually really been taught any kind of table manners besides what he's picked up on his own. Which, um, isn't much. So, um.   
> Good thing he's sitting next to Joey, who _has_.
> 
> Other people's manners turn out not to be so good either. 
> 
> There is a tiny bit of hate speech, reacted to appropriately (I wouldn't use a word like that casually).

 

 

Rodney knew his table manners weren’t anything special. It had never bothered him before, to be ignorant of etiquette— it was the sort of thing that was a waste of his time, and beneath him, and uninteresting. But at a formal table in a formal dining room, with three forks and two spoons and three glasses and two plates, Rodney found himself at a bit of a loss, and more than a little intimidated. 

He would have sort of been okay about it except for the fact that somehow even Joey knew which glass was his. Rodney had been seated between John and Joey, and discovered that watching Joey was probably the best cue to figure out how to navigate the thicket of silverware. 

Joey caught him looking and said, “Put your napkin in your lap, Rodney.” 

“How do you know all this stuff?” Rodney asked. 

“Dad and I practiced,” he said. “And then we went to a really fancy restaurant as the test at the end. It was fun!”

“My dad never did that with me,” Rodney groused. 

“It’s really easy, though,” Joey said. “You just use the silverware from the outside to the inside.”

“They don’t cover this in astrophysics school,” Rodney said. 

“PJ says you study aliens,” Joey said, eyeing him with resentment. “Why didn’t you tell me about the aliens?”

“There aren’t aliens!” Rodney said. 

“What’s this about aliens,” Patrick said from the head of the table. He was between Joey and PJ; Adele was across from Rodney, and Dave across from John, and then Elise was in the next seat over surreptitiously reading a book under the table. At that, though, she looked up.

“There really aren’t aliens,” Rodney said. “Not confirmed ones,” he hedged. “That I know of.” _Publicly,_ he added silently. That way he wasn’t lying. 

“What do you do?” Patrick asked. 

“Mostly, data analysis,” Rodney said, which was technically mostly true. “We are monitoring all kinds of radiation signatures, as far as our instruments can reach, and part of that is in fact the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It hasn’t yet yielded us any contact with aliens.” _No, they actually just knocked on the door and started abducting people through it_ , he added mentally. 

“I’m surprised the Air Force is so concerned with that,” Patrick said. 

“Of course they are,” Rodney said. “The Air Force is the branch of service responsible for the sky, and that naturally includes space. Mostly so far they’re concerned with satellites launched by the US and by other terrestrial powers, and I do a fair bit of work concerning that sort of thing, but they’d be idiots not to keep their eyes on wider developments.”

John passed a bread basket to him, and he had to pause to take a roll, glancing over to see if John had taken anything. He had, so Rodney took one, and held the basket for Joey, who shook his head. Patrick took it, and Rodney looked over at John, who had pulled his roll in half, buttered both halves, and now passed one over to Joey, who took it happily. A woman had come in and was filling glasses from carafes on the sideboard. The woman was middle-aged, dusky-skinned, maybe Hispanic. She held both carafes questioningly, looking at Rodney. 

“Wine or juice,” John murmured. 

“Oh,” Rodney said. “Uh. Wine.” The woman smiled and filled one of the forest of glassware in front of Rodney, then poured from the other carafe into one of Joey’s glasses. They had serving staff. The Sheppards had serving staff. Of course. Like Patrick was going to be in the kitchen slaving over a hot oven. 

“I suppose that makes sense,” Patrick was saying, and Rodney had to rewind to the previous conversation. “But really. They haven’t found anything?”

_Why_ , Rodney wondered nervously, _what does he know?_  

“I admit,” Dave said, “I’m kind of a science fiction fan. I always hope we do find aliens.”

“If we did, though,” John said, “do you really think they’d just put it on the news?”

_Shit_ , Rodney thought, _what does_ he _know_? He’d really thought John didn’t have any idea whose genes he had.

“Why would they hide it, though?” Elise asked, actually interested enough to put her book down. 

“Because people would panic,” Adele said. “Can you imagine?”

John shook his head, and Rodney occupied himself with his roll. 

“So,” Patrick said, “Science does believe that there are aliens out there somewhere.”

“I believe that’s the prevailing scientific opinion, yes,” Rodney said, not looking up from the roll. “On the premise that there are simply too many planets in existence with the capacity to support life as we know it for it never to have happened anywhere else.”

“ _I_ wanna discover aliens,” PJ declared. 

“Me too,” Joey said. 

“We can’t both do it,” PJ said, scowling.

Joey frowned back at him. “Sure we can.”

“We can’t both be first,” PJ said. 

“Well, if I beat you both to it, the point’s moot,” Rodney said. 

“He _has_ got thirty years’ head start,” John pointed out. 

“When I win my Nobel,” Rodney said, ignoring that slight overestimation of his age (or was it? Depressing), “I’ll invite both of you.”

“When,” Patrick said, smiling. “Not if.”

“Definitely when,” Rodney said, lifting his chin. “I’d have one already, if so much of my work wasn’t still classified.”

“Really,” Patrick said. 

The Hispanic woman came back out with a big tray laden with serving dishes, and set them out with practiced ease. Rodney escaped into eating, and the subject of aliens did not come up again. Joey’s manners sustained Rodney without significant embarrassment through dinner, and they lingered at the table while the children ran off, eye-rollingly shepherded by Elise, to go watch television in the den. 

John watched Joey go without much concern, lounging in his chair and listening to the conversation. Adele was telling an entertaining story of a past birthday where her mother had tried to surprise her with something. Rodney followed for a while, but got distracted by the way the room’s chandelier cast sharp shadows across John’s jaw and throat. Eventually John caught him looking, and gave him a flirty smirk and an eyebrow waggle. 

Rodney completely lost the thread of all conversation then, as he remembered that he was going home with this guy tonight and was probably going to see him naked. Funny how the novelty of that hadn’t yet worn off. He gazed a few moments longer before remembering that John wasn’t really out to his family and giving him doe-eyed looks was probably not kosher. He collected himself in time to hear the finale of Adele’s story, which somehow involved a monkey. He laughed along, probably unconvincingly. 

Joey came running into the room crying, pursued by PJ, and Dave spoke crossly to PJ while Joey climbed into John’s lap and composed himself leaning against his father’s chest. Adele marched PJ back down the hall, annoyed, as John planted soothing kisses on Joey’s head. Rodney watched them, knowing he wasn’t being at all subtle in his staring at John, but unable to look away. They looked so much alike, father and son, with the same sharp nose and the same shape to their mouths. Joey’s eyes were dark, while John’s were green, but that was the only difference, and in this light it was indistinguishable. 

Joey regained his courage gradually, unburying his head from John’s chest, but he was still a little cowed and fragile. Finally John excused himself from the table to go back with Joey and fortify him against his larger and apparently more aggressive cousin. This left only Dave, Patrick, and Rodney at the table, and Rodney had stopped drinking wine so he had only juice to keep up his strength in the sudden pressure of conversation. 

“So,” Rodney said, a little desperate as he realized it was too late to just scramble after John, “what do you do?”

Patrick looked amused, and exchanged a glance with Dave. “We run Sheppard Power Logistics,” Patrick said. “The largest energy conglomerate in the Great Lakes and Upper Midwest.”

“I should probably have made that connection,” Rodney said, belatedly remembering the name on his utilities bill. He’d never once noticed. “In my defense, I’m not from around here.”

“I’m the CEO and head up the Board of Directors,” Patrick continued. “Dave works in our technical department and also acts as one of our vice presidents. Adele is in our public relations department. John was supposed to have been in our financial department, but despite showing an early interest in that sort of thing, he ran away and joined the Air Force instead, sort of at the last minute. He’s sort of… our black sheep.” He smiled fatuously, and it wasn’t a particularly kind expression.

“Oh,” Rodney said intelligently. 

Dave stepped in then, pretty obviously saving him. “You’re not from around here? Did I hear someone say you were Canadian?”

“Oh yes,” Rodney said gratefully. “I’m from Alberta, kinda near Edmonton.”

“Have you been living in the US long?” 

“Sort of,” Rodney said. “I got headhunted straight out of grad school by the US Government, because of some of my research on wormhole theory as it happens, but they had been keeping tabs on me since sixth grade, it turns out. I wasn’t lying or kidding about the nuclear bomb thing, I really didn’t think that one through, but in my defense, I was _eleven_.”

Dave laughed. “So you’ve been working in the US since then,” he said. 

“Well,” Rodney said, “no. I’ve been working _for_ the US, but not always here. I just spent two years in Siberia, working at a research facility there on a joint project— alternative energy research, as it happens, which would probably be fascinating to someone at your company but is probably still too classified. But, if it’s ever declassified, you should get in on that.”

Dave was regarding him with the first remotely John-like expression Rodney had yet seen on him, a kind of wry indulgent fondness. Rodney trailed off. “What?”

“Nothing,” Dave said. “That was just a funny sentence.” He waved one hand self-deprecatingly. “Part of what I do is manage the R&D department, so I kind of… I interact with scientists a lot. And yes, I’m very involved with liasing with the government, keeping up on declassification and bidding on projects and the like. We actually do a fair bit of fabrication under tight security for classified government projects, so it’s very possible that you worked with components we made. My pet project is alternative energy sources for generators.”

“That was my project in Siberia,” Rodney said, then snapped his jaw shut. “I shouldn’t have said even that much. God, I’m out of practice. I’ve spent so much of my life in locked-down secure facilities I sometimes forget.”

Dave half-smiled wryly. “It’s all right,” he said, “I’m hardly going to tell anyone.”

Rodney glanced nervously at Patrick, and then realized Patrick wasn’t there. “Oh,” he said, “where—“ 

“You didn’t hear him excuse himself? He just went to check up on the boys. He’s really very, very pleased to get to see Joey,” Dave said. “He’s always been such a devoted grandfather to my kids, I’m so glad John’s had a change of heart about him.”

Rodney looked worriedly at the door. “I really didn’t want to leave John alone with Patrick quite so much,” he said. “I’m sort of along as a buffer. But no surprise, I’m sort of bad at that too.”

Dave sighed. “John and Dad have butted heads a lot, over the years. I don’t know what he’s told you, but I assure you, it hasn’t all been one-sided.”

Rodney blinked at Dave. “Oh,” he said, “I think John’s been pretty scrupulously fair in his telling of it. He’s really a pretty amazingly forgiving person. When he got shot he tried to call Nancy and tell her, but his phone cut out and she thought he hung up on her, so she didn’t take his calls for three days. That’s why he took a taxi home from the hospital, because she wasn’t picking up and he didn’t want to bother anyone else.”

Dave grimaced. “That’s so John,” he said. 

“And even then, when he was trying over and over to get through and she kept putting him to voicemail, John wouldn’t say anything mean or even impatient about her,” Rodney went on. “I’d even say, hey, it’s okay, I won’t tell on you, you can vent for once, and he still refused. He said he won’t even _think_ anything unkind about her because Joey’d pick up on it and he can’t do that to the kid.” 

“Wow,” Dave said. “I didn’t realize.”

“And so he’s had to tell a couple stories over the last couple of days,” Rodney said, “various things about his interactions with Patrick, and he keeps being upset when we understandably get mad on his behalf at some of the shitty things Patrick’s done to him, and keeps making excuses for him.”

“Really,” Dave said. “What kinds of things has Dad done to him, exactly?”

Rodney frowned at his juice glass. “Maybe they don’t seem shitty to you,” he said. “But I tell you what, I had a horrible upbringing and parents who never supported me, and I’m still absolutely appalled by some of it. Like,” he cast about for an example and snapped his fingers as he thought of it, “the house.”

“What house?” Dave asked. 

“The house where Nancy lives with Joey,” Rodney said. 

“Dad gave that to them as a wedding gift,” Dave said. “What’s wrong with it?”

Did he really not know? “When they divorced, Patrick called John and said that since the marriage hadn’t lasted, he should give back the wedding gifts.”

“They were married for like ten years,” Dave said, eyebrows pulling together. 

“Seven, I guess,” Rodney said. “But it turned out Patrick had never actually given them the deed to it. So he took it back, and John gave him all of his retirement savings and combat and hazard pay as a down payment, and has been paying him over half his income every month ever since, so that Nancy and Joey don’t get evicted.”

Dave stared blankly at Rodney, and Rodney braced himself to leave the room rather than throwing something glass with liquid in it at this smug helmet-haired asshole who was going to tell him— “That’s appalling,” Dave said, shaking his head. “That’s— that’s fucking ridiculous. Oh my god. That’s why he said his investment portfolio was pretty tied up in real estate. Are you serious?” 

“Dead serious,” Rodney said, astonished and relieved at Dave’s reaction. “John’s been freaking out and trying to figure out how he can get his supervisor to let him return to work as soon as he can, even though he just had major abdominal surgery. They cut his spleen out, you know, because the bullet had damaged it and he’d’ve bled to death otherwise. But since he wasn’t on the job, workman’s comp doesn’t pay anything, and temporary disability will probably take weeks to process and only pays a pittance compared to his normal salary, never mind the overtime he relies on to make ends meet. And the kid that shot him was some teenage delinquent, it’s not like there’s any point in trying to sue him to make up for lost wages or pain or whatever. He should be flat on his back, not pushing himself to recover, but he doesn’t feel he has the time to lie around.”

“I had no idea,” Dave said. 

“Patrick charges him late fees and interest,” Rodney went on, finding a strange savage enjoyment in sharing anger on John’s behalf with someone else qualified to feel it. “He knows that if he misses a payment he’ll never catch up again, he doesn’t earn enough and he has no savings. He gives up weekends with Joey, even though they’re the only thing that makes him happy, so he can get overtime shifts.”

“And Nancy can’t afford the mortgage either,” Dave filled in.

“No,” Rodney said, “John never even told her, because, wait for it, he didn’t want her to get mad at Patrick because Joey would pick up on it and he doesn’t want to do that to the kid. Are you seeing a theme here?”

“Oh my God,” Dave said. 

“He lives his entire life for that kid, and never gets to see him, because he works so much to afford a house he’ll never live in,” Rodney concluded. 

Dave shook his head in disbelief. “Dad was just telling me how worried he was about John’s finances,” he said. “What a disingenuous bastard.”

“Of course he’s worried,” Rodney said, “he’s personally sabotaging them. And meanwhile John’s up half the night worrying, and could throw a blood clot and die. It’s not easy to watch.”

“Dad could buy ten houses like that and not put an appreciable dent in his net worth,” Dave said. 

“That was the impression I got,” Rodney said. “But when I expressed that kind of sentiment, John shut me down and said it wasn’t worth discussing.”

Dave rubbed his face. “Jesus,” he said. “I, you know— John and I haven’t hung out much as adults. I don’t, I hate to admit this but I don’t really… _know_ him. Not anywhere near as well as I should.”

“I haven’t known him long,” Rodney said, “but we’ve been through a lot, so I feel like I know him pretty well.” He pushed back from the table. “And I really, really, really don’t mean to keep letting him go off with Patrick by himself.”

“No, that’s a good thought,” Dave said. “I’d been trying to stay between them, more or less. Adele’s with them now, though. She’ll keep things civil. She’s very good at that.” He stood. “Still, let’s go find them.”

Rodney nodded, and got to his feet. As they moved out into the hallway, Dave said quietly, “You know, don’t take this the wrong way at all, and I’m sorry if I’m mistaken, but, um. You… and John?”

Rodney cringed. “Um,” he said. “We, um. It’s, well, it’s not exactly at the meet-the-family stage, y’know?”

“But I’m not crazy,” Dave said, smiling a little, and unlike most of Patrick’s expression this one was friendly. “You’re not just his neighbor-cum-chauffeur.”

It was impossible for that not to kindle a warm little glow in Rodney’s chest, despite everything. “No,” he said, shyly pleased. 

“Good,” Dave said. “I, again, I don’t really know him, and he can be hard to read, but it seemed to me that the divorce really broke him up, and I’d been worried he might not move on from that.”

“Well,” Rodney said, “I like him a lot. He’s kind of an amazing person.”

“He sure is something,” Dave said, laughing. “He’s not easy to pin down, but he’s definitely something.”

They got to the den and found the children raptly watching The Incredibles, even Elise. Adele was perched on one end of the couch, but neither John nor Patrick were there. Adele looked up, smiled at Dave, reacted to something in his expression, looked around the room, and looked chagrined. “I didn’t notice them leave,” she said, grimacing. “It can’t have been long ago.”

“I’ll find them,” Dave said, “don’t worry about it.”

Rodney followed Dave back out of the room, a great deal less interested in a computer-animated superhero movie than in finding John. Dave stood a moment a little ways down the hall, tilting his head, then set off down one of the intersecting corridors. The house was enormous, and winding, and unnecessarily complicated, and Rodney wondered if the children got lost in it. 

Dave was even taller than John, and had longer legs, and also hadn’t recently had abdominal surgery, so it was sort of hard for Rodney to keep up with his fast walking pace. But he slowed, and paused at a corner, and Rodney quietly caught him up just in time to hear John say “— course I’m glad she’s dating someone else, Dad. I don’t want her to be miserable and we both know we can’t go back the way we were.”

“It just seems you were awfully friendly, after the divorce,” Patrick said. Rodney peered a little further around the corner, and realized the room was a kitchen. Patrick was out of his line of sight, but John was partly visible, his elbow and part of his face, as he leaned against a counter. 

“We parted friends,” John said. “We don’t have to hate each other to understand we don’t work out as a partnership. She’s a great person, and a fantastic mother, but she deserves to find happiness with someone else. I can’t begrudge her that.” 

“She is a great person,” Patrick said. “I still can’t understand why you let her go.”

“I had to, Dad,” John said. “You can’t make someone stay when they want to go. There’s, like, a million pop songs about it. It’s a cliché because it’s true.”

“I’m starting to wonder, though,” Patrick said. 

“Wonder what?” John’s resignation spiked into mild annoyance. “You want me to cite sources? Make you a mix tape? Or are you saying I should’ve just locked her in the basement? I didn’t have a ton of options, there.”

“I wonder if you really were a faggot all along,” Patrick said. 

John’s head jerked back like he’d been slapped, and now his face was visible in Rodney’s line of sight, his profile. “Dad,” he said, quiet and shocked, and the expression on his face was nothing so much as hurt. 

“Please,” Patrick said. “I’m not blind. Did you think I’d gotten stupid in my old age?”

John laughed, a short sharp humorless bark. “No,” he said. “I certainly did not.”

“The Air Force probably pays him better than they did you,” Patrick said. “Is that how you’re making ends meet now? Sucking cock?”

John’s expression went completely, horribly blank for a split second, then stretched into a tight grin. “That’s some pretty amazing deductive reasoning there, Dad.”

Dave threw Rodney a wide-eyed look, then swung around the door into the kitchen. “There you guys are,” he said jovially. “What, you’re not Pixar fans?”

“John needed something to take a pill with,” Patrick said. Rodney scurried through the door after Dave, in time to see Patrick pull a glass out of one of the cabinets. The kitchen was enormous, of course, with marble countertops and tile inlay and stainless steel everywhere. 

John had his hands wrapped around the edge of the counter and was staring at the floor, jaw tight. Rodney stood where he was, at a loss. After a moment John looked up and caught him staring. He seemed to read Rodney’s expression pretty easily, because the taut line of his shoulders eased and he looked grim and tired, and shook his head. 

Dave took the glass from Patrick and went to the fridge with it. “You want water, or something else?”

“Water’s fine,” John said. 

“I’ll get back to the movie, then,” Patrick said, and left the room. Dave watched him go, then came back and handed the glass to John. 

John set it on the counter and pulled a pill bottle out of his pocket. “How long were you guys standing there?” he asked, not looking up as he sorted through the pills in his hand and pulled out two different ones, an antibiotic and a painkiller. 

“Long enough,” Dave said quietly. 

“If that’s the worst thing he does tonight, I’ll consider myself lucky,” John said, and swallowed both pills and most of the glass of water. 

“I don’t get it,” Dave said, staring out the door after Patrick with a pained expression. “We have gay friends. SPL has been steadily improving HR policies and in this coming fiscal year we’ll be extending benefits to same-sex partners of employees. Dad personally okayed that one.” He shook his head, bewildered. “My reaction was to be happy for you, John.”

John shrugged, elaborately careless, weary and resigned. “If I were holding my breath for him to approve of anything I did,” he said, “I’d’ve suffocated before I even took my first breath.” He set the glass down in the sink, shoved away from the counter, and walked out the door. 


	17. Deadbolt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which John learns many things and reacts badly in different ways to almost all of them. In fact, both boys demonstrate phenomenal coping skills in this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I'm updating kind of a lot on this one but I hit a mini inspiration jackpot. These jerks woke me up this morning with the solution to a problem I was having and I wrote it so hard I crashed Scrivener. (Which is an excellent writing program, btw.)
> 
>  
> 
> Hilariously, I originally meant this to be a Rodney-whump chapter. John sort of freaked out about it, though.

 

Rodney rolled over, blinking. The clock said 1:30. He wasn’t sure what had woken him. Tentatively, he stretched out his hand across the bed. The mattress was big enough that he wasn’t immediately sure, but he reached a little further and found the thrown-back edge of the blanket, and knew John wasn’t in the bed. 

He’d started off there. After dropping Joey off, they’d come back and sat in Rodney’s living room for a few moments before John had wordlessly gone and climbed into Rodney’s bed. Rodney had followed in a few minutes, sort of hopefully, but John had been unresponsive and silent, as he had been the whole ride home. He hadn’t even uncurled enough to let Rodney spoon him, had pulled away when he’d tried. Intimidated, Rodney had retreated to his side of the bed, and had fallen asleep despite himself, worn out by several nights of sleep deprivation. 

But John was gone now. Rodney sat up, listening intently. He didn’t hear anything, but… He slipped out of the bed and went to the living room. John was sitting on the couch, face illuminated by the light from the Ancient information accession device, frowning in concentration. 

Oh yeah, shit, Rodney had left it on the coffee table. He was slipping. That was careless. He leaned in the doorway, watching as John deftly flipped through several pages of information and flinched visibly as he hit the end of what it contained. There were supposed to be a whole pile more information crystals, but this one just had the one. It had an enormous amount of data on it, but it was all fragmented; the other crystals held the information in a distributed fashion, like a hard drive array, and it would quickly slam up against the wall of missing information if you looked too far in any direction. 

John was easily bypassing the gaps, though; he seemed to instinctively know where to dive back in to access the next cluster of information. He was really a natural at this stuff, and Rodney stared for a long time in jealousy. 

Finally John looked up and saw him, and immediately the hologram disappeared and the device went inert. 

“Hey,” Rodney said, shuffling into the room. John stared at him, impossible to read in the dark. “Uh,” Rodney went on in a minute, when John still said nothing, “are you okay?”

“You were lying,” John said. 

“What?” Rodney froze, casting back frantically— what had he lied to John about? 

“To PJ,” John clarified. Rodney blinked, still at a loss. “About aliens.”

Oh.

“This thing,” John said, and lights flickered across the surface of the device. He shook his head. “Humans didn’t make it.”

“Well,” Rodney said, “technically, actually,” he gestured nervously. “They were, um, pretty much human. As it happens. I mean, semantics, but they were pretty much—“ He fumbled to a stop.

“Why can I use it?” John asked. All Rodney could see of his face was a glimmer of reflected light in his eyes. It was uncanny. 

“Um,” Rodney said, twisting his hands together. 

“Rodney,” John said. “What _am_ I?”

“Human,” Rodney said urgently, finally understanding the nature of John’s worry. “Totally, completely, normally human. It’s just— we’re all sort of descended from them, really, as it happens, and— some of us more than others. And you’re in the more-than-others category.”

John stared at him, and let out his breath. The device lit up gradually, until John’s face was visible, and John set it down on the couch, apparently using it as a night-light. “This isn’t what I expected ‘deep space telemetry’ to be code for,” he said. 

“No,” Rodney said. “But I— Sam sent me the paperwork, the briefing and stuff. There’s a lot more to this. I’ve got permission to tell you some of it.”

“Not unless I sign a nondisclosure agreement, right?” John said. 

Rodney fidgeted. “Well,” he said. “Right.”

“I’m not signing anything,” John said. “I don’t want my name in writing anywhere. I don’t want to be involved in any of this.” 

“This is so much bigger than petty terrestrial wars,” Rodney said. “It’s so much more important than Earth governments. John, I honestly don’t even know that it’s something you really have a choice about. If you _can_ help us, you, you _have_ to. We need help.”

John stared at him. “Are we at war?” he asked. 

Rodney grimaced. “Well,” he said. “Um. Sort of.”

“Rodney,” John said. “Are we _at war with aliens_?”

“It’s not really war,” Rodney hedged. “There are a lot of aliens, it turns out. And I mean— a _lot_ , John. And until not too long ago most of them had forgotten about Earth. But, um. Some of them know now, and some of them are friendly and some of them are, well… not so much.”

“Jesus Christ,” John said. 

“It’s not exactly war, but the unfriendly ones— a lot of them will just sort of take a shot at anyone they think is weak enough, and um, we’re kind of, on a galactic scale, far from the weakest but also not exactly the strongest.” Rodney waved his hands a little. “So um, we kind of, we need all the help we can get.”

“What could _I_ do?” John asked skeptically. 

Rodney gestured at the glowing device. “There is one other person in the entire world who can use that stuff as well as you can.”

“And we’re gonna fend off the aliens with a broken encyclopedia,” John said, and without even touching the device he brought the display swirling up, showing a screen full of indecipherable Ancient writing that scrolled by rapidly before suddenly blanking out and displaying a blinking error message.

“Maybe,” Rodney said. “But that’s not the only device we’ve found. They’ve only sent me the ones that don’t seem useful, or were too broken for the other guy to turn on.” He gestured. “He couldn’t get this one to turn on at all, John. We think you might actually be even more proficient than he is.”

John stared blankly. “What… other kinds of devices?” he asked. “I mean, what are there?”

“A lot of things,” Rodney said. “Including a defense platform that was recently used to defend Earth from a full-scale attack. Without it we probably would all be dead or enslaved by now.”

“Enslaved,” John said, with absolutely no inflection. “By little green men.”

“As far as I know, none of the aliens have been little green men,” Rodney said. “I haven’t seen many of them, but the vast majority we have encountered have in fact been human or approximately so, for some complicated reasons I can’t really get into.”

“Really,” John said, his gaze sharpening a little. 

“Yes,” Rodney said. “I have only met a couple of them. I mean, I don’t go into headquarters very often. And the one I’ve spoken to isn’t technically human, he has a, a symbiote that means his morphology is somewhat distinctive, but he pretty much just looks like a guy— I mean, a really big and intimidating guy, but if he wears a hat he just looks like a guy.”

“Symbiote,” John said, looking blank again. 

“Mm,” Rodney said. “Yeah, it’s weird. Lives in his, kinda, gut area. Weird snakey thing. When they mature they actually live in your, well, they wrap around your brainstem, kinda.” He made a circular gesture around his neck area. “It’s creepy as hell. They take over your body, talk through your mouth, the whole lot.”

“What the fuck,” John said. 

“So those ones, usually they’re not good guys, I should mention. I mean, there are some varieties that are okay. But they’re pretty, mm, generally insane. And you can’t tell by looking whether somebody has one of these things in them, so really there’s no way to tell.” John stared at Rodney. Rodney realized he was babbling, and nodded conclusively. “So they do MRIs on returning gate teams just to make sure.”

“Returning… gate… teams,” John said, completely expressionless. 

“Shit,” Rodney said, “I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you about the Gate.”

“Don’t,” John said, holding out one hand, palm outward. “Don’t tell me any more.”

“It’s a lot to take in,” Rodney said nervously.

“Yeah,” John said. He stood up and walked out of the room, through the kitchen, and Rodney heard the apartment door open.

“Wait,” Rodney said, and hurried after him. “Wait, John, don’t— where are you going?”

“I need a minute,” John said. “I need a— more than a minute.” 

“Okay,” Rodney said helplessly, standing in the kitchen doorway. 

“I, yeah,” John said.

“I’ll, um,” Rodney said, “I’ll be here.” 

 

 

Rodney sat on the couch for two hours before he finally accepted that John wasn’t coming back. He considered going to bed, but knew he wouldn’t sleep, so he went back to work instead. Another six hours and he had completely transcribed all of the data available using manual controls to page through the device. It wasn’t possible to skip sections as John had been doing using the manual controls, so Rodney was limited to a few pages before the section John had left it paged to ended, but he transcribed all of the Ancient text and then set to translating it. 

By noon Rodney was pretty sure John wasn’t coming back. 

He was no stranger to screwing things up. This wasn’t even the first relationship the Stargate program had cost him. And it wasn’t the first time he’d screwed things up with John, either. 

He microwaved a TV dinner and threw himself back into work. He had more than enough projects to keep him busy, and if he was busy, he didn’t have to think or pay attention to anything. 

 

 

 

John made his way painfully up the building’s front stairs. He’d texted Rodney earlier, and on the way back home he’d called him, but there had been no response either time. Which was odd; normally Rodney paid pretty close attention to his phone. Well, really, he had no idea what normal actually was. Before he was injured, they hadn’t been dating. And since he was injured, Rodney had generally stuck by him pretty closely. 

It would be true to the general theme of John’s life for Rodney’s ardor to suddenly cool upon meeting John’s family, however. 

John’s gut twisted a little sickly as a mental image of Patrick repeated the word “faggot” in the same nasty, sly intonation as the original had said it, and he angrily shoved it away and unlocked the front door. 

Fuck it, if Rodney was going to be mad at him, either over this or his perhaps less-than-composed reaction to last night’s bombshells (about which he had decided not to really think too hard until he had a chance to talk to Rodney again), John was going to make him say it to his face. He was through playing avoidance games with people. (Thoughts, sure. People, no.) He caught his breath for a moment, then went down the hall to Rodney’s door and knocked. 

There was no answer, no sound from within. John unashamedly leaned his ear against the door and listened, but there was no sound of television, no radio, no talking on the phone. It didn’t mean Rodney wasn’t there, just that he wasn’t making any noise. John knocked again, and waited, but there was no response. 

Rodney’s car had been there in its usual spot behind the house, next to John’s. He knew that, he had made a point of observing it when he’d gotten out of Rachel’s car. Maybe Rodney had walked down to the Java Temple or something. 

He was exhausted and hurting, and the more tired from his efforts to conceal it. He normally babysat for Rachel at least one day a week. Usually she paid him either in food, booze, cash, or an exchange of favors. Today had been a trade for the ride to the doctor yesterday, a ride in to work for paperwork-filling-out this morning, and a general backlog of favors, and it turned out he really wasn’t healed enough for the concentrated attention of a two-year-old for the six hours between Rachel’s shift starting and her mom getting off work and taking over. And once Thomas had showed up, about four hours into it, he’d been completely out of his depth. Thomas was used to John being the kind of awesome grownup who’d get down on the floor with you and give you horsey rides and throw you and catch you and the like; he’d tried his best to remember not to abuse John, but his attention span was pretty age-appropriate, which meant about thirty seconds. And it just wasn’t possible to be the sole minder of a two-year-old without having to pick her up from time to time. Monica was a tiny little thing, but she was still more than the twenty pounds John wasn’t supposed to be lifting above. He’d really overdone it, and was worse than sore, with a deep tearing ache that he was sort of hoping would go away on its own once he took his missed dose of pain meds.

“Damn it, Rodney,” John sighed, then thought maybe Rodney had gone upstairs to wait for him. The thought perked him up. He’d been too distraught to snuggle the night before, but maybe Rodney would favor him with a do-over before dinner. Imagining that sustained him for the hard slog up the stairs— he was really, really hurting right now, so bad his limbs were heavy and his breath came short— but when he got up to his apartment, only Cosmo was there to greet him. 

He hurt too badly to even pick her up. Which was sad; she was maybe ten pounds with a full belly before using the litter box, if even then. She twined around his legs, purring, and he noted that her food bowl was empty. Rodney hadn’t even come up here, then. If he had, he’d probably have brought her back down with him when he realized John was out. 

John filled her food bowl laboriously, gave her fresh water, and dug himself out a pill from the bottle he’d left in the bathroom and not taken with him today. Not taking strong painkillers prior to babysitting was a good idea from a common sense and good practices standpoint, but a terrible idea from the standpoint of not wishing oneself dead. 

He swallowed the pill and the glass of water, then lay down on the couch. He thought about going back down and knocking one more time, but the stairs stretched out before him like ten miles of desert, and he just couldn’t face it. He pulled out his phone and texted Rodney one more time— _hey, I’m home from babysitting, taking a nap upstairs, come find me when you want dinner._  

Then he passed out with Cosmo purring next to his face. 

 

His phone ringing woke him up. He regarded it blearily. Nancy. 

“’S Sheppard,” he said. He was still hurting, really badly. It was starting to be worrying. He might have to go in to Urgent Care and get it looked at. He really, really didn’t want to do that.

“Hey John,” Nancy said. “I didn’t really get a chance to ask— how was the thing, last night?”

“Hnngghh,” John said, rubbing his face. 

“That good?” she asked. “Or did I wake you up?”

“Both,” John said. 

“Sorry,” she said. “You’re not back to work yet, are you?”

“No,” he said. “Just spent the day babysitting Monica, with a little bonus Thomas at the end, and it feels like a train hit me.”

“Oh dear,” she said, “are you supposed to be unsupervised with children?”

“I thought I was ready,” John said. “Maybe I was overoptimistic. But I owe Rachel a few favors and figured I’d give it a shot. I survived. I think.” 

“My poor baby,” Nancy laughed. “So did Patrick behave himself? How was Adele?”

“Adele and Dave were great,” John said. “And Rodney and Elise got along like a house on fire. It turns out she has a deep burning desire to learn physics but they won’t let her start yet, since she’s in, you know, fourth or fifth grade or whatever she’s in now. So Rodney started her on basic physics, and she thought that was just the best thing in the world.”

“Did Joey and PJ have a good time?” Nancy asked. 

“They got along about as well as you’d expect,” John said, “which is to say, pretty well except that PJ’s bigger and beat the heck out of Joey unless somebody was there to stop him. Which is just so much like me and Dave that I can’t say I’m surprised.” 

“Joey said he had a good time,” Nancy said. “He talked about the horses pretty much nonstop. And the dirt on his pants was pretty impressive.”

“Yeah,” John said, “I didn’t go outside to supervise. There was some mud.”

“How was Patrick?” Nancy asked. 

“Fine,” John lied. Nancy waited. “Mostly,” he hedged.

“What did he do?” she asked. 

John sighed. “He picked up on something, I guess,” he said. “Between me and Rodney, though we hadn’t really said anything and weren’t particularly making an issue of it. But he pulled me aside and asked if you and I had ever had a real marriage or if I’ve been gay the whole time.”

Nancy was silent a moment. “He didn’t,” she said. 

“Wasn’t nearly so polite about it as that,” John admitted. 

She sighed. “That went well,” she said. 

“I expect this will be his next thing,” John said. “He’ll harp on this one for a while yet. Just so you’re warned.”

“What did Dave say?” Nancy asked. 

“Oh, Dad had pulled me aside for it,” John said. “He didn’t say it in front of anybody. I guess Dave overheard some. He didn’t confront Dad at all, but he told me he was happy for me. Which was nice, I guess.”

“Well,” Nancy said, “that’s a small mercy, I suppose.”

“Yeah,” John said. He gathered himself and sat up carefully. He was really, really sore. This was a problem. He sighed heavily. “So um. If we’re doing this, letting Joey know his grandfather, just… that’s probably the tack Dad’s gonna take.”

“What?” Nancy asked, confused.

“He always finds _something_ ,” John said wearily. Absently he ran his hand over his injured side, under his shirt, and frowned; the skin was hot, taut, below the bandaged area. That was a bad sign; there was swelling. He’d re-injured something. “Just… I don’t know if we’ve talked to Joey about any of this stuff. Patrick’s smart enough not to say anything overt, but I bet you anything it’ll be enough for Joey to pick up on.”

“You don’t think your father will try to poison Joey’s mind, do you?” Nancy asked dubiously. 

John didn’t answer, feeling sick. It did sound paranoid, phrased like that. “Not…” he began weakly, but trailed off. “Not poison, but confuse,” he said. “I don’t know what you call it. I just— I’m sorry, this is really… hard to talk about.” 

“John,” Nancy said softly, “oh, John, I wasn’t doubting you, I was just being shocked a man would do that to his own son and grandson.”

“I don’t,” John said, and it was hard to say. “I don’t think, in Patrick’s mind, I’m quite in that category.” 

“What, his son?” Nancy asked. 

“Mm,” John said, noncommittal. “It’s not… I don’t quite… rate, Nancy. I don’t think he’s made any secret of that.”

“If he can’t accept you as a son, then Joey’s not his grandson,” Nancy said. “I mean, it’s as simple as that. And if he doesn’t think our marriage was real, then why would he have any interest in Joey? Does he think I got him from the _mailman_? Or, what, ordered him from a _catalog_?”

“I don’t know,” John said tiredly. “I just, I don’t know, Nancy.” He slumped over, cradling his injured side, feeling really sad and pathetic and dumb.

“If he’s only going to use Joey to hurt you, I don’t see any reason to make a point of including him,” Nancy said. “It’s not like Joey has no family. My family is perfectly happy to accept him.”

“Yeah but _I_ don’t have any family,” John said, and it surprised him: it had been true a long time, and he hadn’t realized it hurt. 

“Oh, John,” Nancy said. “My family still likes you.”

“Especially Clarice,” John said. 

“Oh, Jesus, Clarice,” Nancy said, exasperated. She laughed bitterly. “I’ll kill her. Fine, my family’s a bust too. What about Rodney? He surely has family.”

“Mm,” John said, “not so much.” Wait, what time was it? John glanced over at the clock. Jesus, it was almost 9pm. He hadn’t meant to sleep anywhere near that long. He pulled his phone away from his ear to glance at it: no text message notification in the top bar, no notice of a missed call.

“—John,” Nancy was saying when he put the phone back, on a sighing exhalation. Probably pity, he didn’t really need it. 

“Yeah, whatever,” he said. “’S fine.” He was getting worried now. Nine pm. 

“Okay,” Nancy said, sounding a little surprised. “Well, I’ll do that.”

Shit, he’d missed something important. “Uh,” he said.

“Hey, how are you and Rodney doing?” she asked, with an obvious air of changing the subject. Fuck. Too late to ask her what he’d just agreed to. 

“I’m actually,” he said, “kind of, um, worried about him, a little bit. He kind of, got real weird last night, and I haven’t been in touch with him all day. He’s either ignoring his phone and his doorbell or he’s been abducted by aliens.”

“Oh,” Nancy said, dismayed. 

“Yeah,” John said.

“Was he that upset about your family?” she asked. 

“I don’t think so,” John said. “It was— sort of work-related? I don’t even know how to explain it, but someone from his job was here the other day and I apparently made an impression, and they were… I don’t even know, Nancy.” Rodney hadn’t just been babbling about aliens— that device definitely was not from Earth. He’d gotten such a shockingly clear picture from it, of immense age, immense distance— it was absolutely not modern, not local. That blocky writing was a language, tantalizingly familiar but incalculably alien. The things Rodney had said only made sense in that context. Otherwise he’d definitely have written them off and taken a much closer look at the meds Rodney normally took. 

The meds. Rodney took. 

It was easy to forget that Rodney wasn’t entirely okay either, and John had been so wrapped up in his own troubles he hadn’t even begun to think about the demons Rodney had alluded to. If the guy’d had a breakdown in Siberia less than a year ago— John thought back on the last things he’d said. He’d said he needed a minute. More than a minute. 

What if Rodney thought he wasn’t coming back?

But he’d texted him, first thing in the morning. And he’d called him around noon. And he’d texted him when he got home midafternoon. It wasn’t like… unless Rodney forgot to plug his phone in. Unless his phone wasn’t somewhere he could reach it. Unless. _God._  

“Really,” Nancy said. “I thought he worked for the Air Force?”

“He does,” John said absently. He pushed painfully to his feet— okay, he had _really_ overdone it today, wow, holy _fuck_ — and went to check his door for a note. No. He stood in the hallway, staring at those stairs, those goddamn stairs. He really, really, really did not want to go down them. Cosmo came out into the hallway and twined around his feet, meowing. “I’m not, I got a bad feeling,” he said.

“A bad feeling?” Nancy asked.

“He’s, I don’t know,” John said. “Something’s not right.”

“You’re not making a lot of sense,” Nancy said. 

“No,” John said, “I’m not.” He shooed Cosmo back into the apartment and shut the door. “Hey, I gotta call you back.”

“John?”

“I’ll let you know if something’s wrong, Nancy,” he said. 

 

 

John sat at the foot of the stairs for a while, nerving himself up. Rodney’s car was definitely outside. Every light was off in Rodney’s apartment, even the TV. (John had felt like a total creep, casing the joint from the outside, peering in the windows.) Rodney’s apartment door was locked. He’d called Java Temple, and the three closest bars, and the four closest restaurants, and Rodney wasn’t at any of them. He’d then waited an hour. It was now after 10pm. 

He dialed Rodney’s cellphone one more time. It went straight to voicemail, which meant the phone was off. Like the battery had died. God damn it. He didn’t have a key, so there was only one way he could check to see if Rodney was in there and unresponsive. And it wasn’t exactly… legal. 

Fortunately the landlord was a little bit cheap and hadn’t invested much into the door locks. The deadbolt in this apartment, John knew from the time he’d lived here, was slightly broken. You couldn’t lock it from the outside with a key, only from the inside with the handle. So if Rodney wasn’t there, the deadbolt couldn’t possibly be shot. John had brought down his rubber mallet, and he carried a couple different sized bump keys on his keyring. (Yeah, they were arguably illegal to own, like any lock-picking equipment, but he was a cop. He didn’t abuse that very much, but it was handy for a few things.) He wiggled the correctly-sized one into Rodney’s doorknob lock, and with a quick slam, popped the lock open. The back of his neck prickled with nervousness as he did it, fairly certain that the last thing he needed was to get caught breaking into an apartment in his own building. Even for a cop, that had the potential to go very wrong. Especially if it turned out Rodney had been in here deliberately ignoring him, and took exception to this drastic invasion. 

He tried to open the door, but the deadbolt was shot. 

Fuck, that meant Rodney _was_ in there. And had just heard the not-particularly-quiet process of popping the door lock. “Rodney,” John said, resting his head against the doorframe. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk to me. Just tell me you’re okay.”

No answer. John was feeling nauseated and weak by this point, and he didn’t know if it was worry and fear, or that he’d really done something to himself. But Rodney was in there. 

“Rodney,” he tried again, trying not to sound pathetic. “Just say the word and I’ll stop bugging you. I’m just afraid you’ve fallen and hurt yourself or something. I just wanna know you’re okay.” _Because I’m not and if you are I need you to drive me because I can’t afford an ambulance_. Pathetic.

He should just call an ambulance right now, and probably the police to have them get in and check on Rodney. But he really, really, really didn’t want to face Rodney if it turned out the guy just really didn’t want to talk to him. 

He had one more trick from when he’d lived here. He habitually checked for the places people broke in, so he knew this apartment’s weakness. He leaned against the wall a moment, gathering strength and nerving himself up. He was in no shape to do this, and Rodney was probably going to be angry with him. But all he could think of was Rodney passed-out and seizing from a drug interaction; a hundred scenes he’d witnessed through work of distraught relatives leading him to the discovered bodies of loved ones flashed through his mind, each one with Rodney’s face in whatever stage of decay the body had been in.

He was being crazy.

No, he wasn’t. 

He knew _exactly_ how badly these things could go.

Moving the garbage can into position was an unnecessarily difficult endeavor. The city had, as an anti-rat measure a while back, introduced those big wheeled garbage totes, and while they had actually done a phenomenal job of shifting the rat problem out to the first-ring suburbs* (an unintended effect but hilarious nonetheless to a city cop) they also had contributed to a fair number of burglaries in precisely this fashion. They were a lot bigger and sturdier than normal garbage cans. And damn heavy to move. He had to rest after every step, curling painfully around his side. The heat, the heaviness, he was pretty sure meant internal bleeding, which he was in no mood to deal with. He couldn’t tell if he was so cold from blood loss or from the fact that it was below freezing outside. 

Now all that mattered was that the lady in the back lower apartment was a third-shift factory worker and thus wasn’t home, and the family in the back upper apartment had little kids and was thus in bed. The next-door neighbors in this side had their curtains drawn, and most of their lights were out; the lower-floor tenants were a young couple and John would bet anything they were still out at dinner or the movies or something. They went out a lot and came home noisily and late. 

He gathered what little strength he had, climbed up onto the garbage tote, wiggled the storm window until it popped out of its frame, and jimmied at the window frame until the latch slid out of place. When he’d lived here, he’d just kept a two-by-four wedged into the top part of this window frame, and he’d thought about leaving it when he left but he figured the new tenants would probably not understand, and would discard it. Fortunately, Rodney hadn’t even noticed this window, so it opened smoothly and easily, though it hurt like a bitch to lift his arm up like that. 

He crawled in, biting his lips savagely at how badly it hurt him to move like that, and fell onto the floor in the spare bedroom, unable to keep from whimpering. Ow. Ow. Ow, fucking _ow_ Jesus _Christ_ he’d definitely torn something. He rolled around in undignified agony for a minute before dragging himself upright and shoving the window back down. No sense inviting someone else in this way. God. Ow. God. He couldn’t breathe, it hurt so bad. 

He leaned against the wall as his legs slid out from under him, panting harshly to catch his breath. No good. It wasn’t helping. He felt something and touched the bandage under his shirt, and his hand came away wet. In the streetlight coming through the window he could see that his fingers were stained dark. Blood. Fuck. Fuck. 

He pushed to his feet and staggered out into the living room. “Rodney,” he gasped, but there was no one there, no one on the couch, no one on the floor. He looked into the bedroom, and used his non-bloodied hand to flip on the light switch. No Rodney. No one was there. He checked the bathroom, flicking the light on carefully. No one there, no one in the tub. He went to the kitchen, finally, and turned the light on. 

There, on the table, were Rodney’s keys, his wallet, and his cellphone. John turned the cellphone over. Dead; the battery hadn’t been charged. He turned. Rodney’s coat was hanging over the back of the chair where he always left it. His boots were next to the door, his shoes next to them, his sneakers beside those. 

John sat down heavily in the kitchen chair. Wherever Rodney was, he’d left his door locked from the inside, had no shoes, no coat, no wallet, and no keys. 

He’d been joking about the abducted by aliens bit, but it was starting to seem more plausible. 

And in that case, calling the cops wasn’t going to help one bit.

He staggered into the living room, giving the house one more once-over. No signs of struggle, no other open windows, no hints of disturbance. It looked like Rodney had been working— there were a few dirty dishes scattered around, the detritus of a TV dinner on the coffee table. The power adapter to a laptop was still stretched from the wall plug under the TV across to its vacant other end sitting on the couch. Empty coffee cups were scattered around. Rodney really had no concept of maintaining a clean environment.

No, he wasn’t here. And John was so dizzy now he couldn’t stand, and the blood was running all down his side. Shit. He grabbed a handful of paper towels, staggered into the bathroom so he wouldn’t bleed on the carpet, and sat on the toilet lid. He pulled out his phone and scrolled through the contacts list. 

Lt. Col. Samantha Carter. He’d put in the info from her business card, figuring it was probably better for him to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. He hesitated a moment. If there was some innocent explanation of all this, he was going to sound like an idiot. But, well, being thought an idiot was unavoidable at this stage, and it was better to raise a false alarm than let Rodney simply be missing. 

It rang twice, and then she picked up, her voice familiar enough that he was sure it was her. “Hello?” she said, confused and suspicious. She didn’t generally give out this number, then. 

“Uh,” John said, realizing he hadn’t thought of what to say. “Um. McKay’s missing.”

“Who is this?” she asked. 

Right. He was obviously a bit more distraught than he’d thought. “This is John Sheppard,” he said. “The, um, the guy— Rodney McKay’s neighbor—“

“Yes, yes,” she said, warmer now, “oh, of course. I remember you. Yes. I forgot I gave you this number. Have you considered my offer?”

“Um,” he said, “no. I just— I’ve been trying for over twelve hours to reach McKay, and he’s— he’s gone, Colonel, I finally got into his apartment and his keys and his wallet and his phone are all here, his coat is here, his shoes are here, the door’s locked from the _inside_ —" Stop panicking, John, it doesn’t engender confidence in your observational skills. “There are no signs of a struggle, but—" 

“Oh my gosh,” she said. “Oh. I’m so sorry. No. He’s here. It’s all right, we kind of— we grabbed him without much notice. We had a breakthrough development and really needed his input. I didn’t give him any time to prepare, I just sort of showed up and grabbed him. No, he’s okay, he’s just fine.”

John slumped over until his forehead rested on the edge of the sink. “Jesus,” he whispered. “I broke into his fucking apartment. I thought— Jesus. I almost called the police.”

“Oh my gosh,” Carter said again. “No. I’m so sorry. He even said he forgot his phone, and I wouldn’t let him go back for it— I never even thought. What time is it where you are?”

Wh— how could they be time zones away? “It’s well after ten,” John said. “I’ve been trying to reach him since early this morning.” He realized his hands were shaking. “I thought— I thought he’d gone off his meds, or someone had come after him— you lot _have_ to have better security than it looks like,” he interrupted himself, suddenly very cross. “There’s no way you’re letting a pretty much defenseless astrophysicist reverse-engineer classified technology in his living room with no observation or protections of any kind.”

Carter hesitated a moment, then laughed. “Yes,” she said, “of course he’s under guard.”

It didn’t really reassure John, though. He sort of felt vaguely nauseated now, as the panic ebbed. “Is he there?” he asked. “Can I talk to him for a second?” Part of him didn’t really believe her. 

“Of course,” she said. She spoke a little farther away from the receiver. “McKay,” she said.

“Is that John?” Rodney’s voice was the best fucking sound John had ever heard. “I told you, Sam, I fucking told you! You can’t just beam people out of their living rooms! You’re lucky I had pants on!”

“You should’ve picked up your phone when we called you five times,” Carter answered.

“John,” Rodney said directly into the phone. “I’m sorry. They didn’t give me a chance to grab my phone or I at least would’ve texted you.”

“Okay,” John said. He was really dizzy now, probably because it hurt so bad and hopefully not because he’d soaked through all those paper towels and was dripping blood on the floor now. 

“I, we just, I just had a major breakthrough on the translation— with your help, the bit you left that device on last time you touched it was a lengthy bit of text on a very particular subject that dovetailed just so, so perfectly with something Carter was working on, and I had to come in, she made me come in right away to put it all together— it’s really incredible, John—" 

His voice was kind of far away at this point. John was getting heavier and heavier, and he knew he couldn’t stay sitting up. His choices were to let himself down or fall down, so he let himself down onto the bathroom floor, curled himself around the pain (it was bad, it was so bad), and let Rodney’s voice keep washing over him. 

Finally the voice paused. “John?” Rodney said. “John?”

“I’m cold,” John said blurrily. 

Rodney laughed. “Turn the heat up,” he said, and his voice went off into another long tirade, more about technology and how brilliant Rodney was. John listened fondly. Rodney was so great. He was lucky to have found somebody that great. But his voice trailed off again. “John? Are you even listening?”

“Yeah,” John said. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Bleeding,” John answered. “Are you coming home?”

“What?” Rodney’s voice went kind of shrill. “What do you mean?”

“I hurt myself,” John said, a little dreamily. 

“Oh my God,” Rodney said. 

“If you’re coming home I’ll wait,” John said. “But if you’re not I should probably go.” He’d have to change his shirt, no cabbie would take him like this. He definitely wasn’t calling an ambulance, that would be like a grand even with his health insurance. No way could he afford that, he still hadn't paid for the last one. 

“How bad is it?” Rodney demanded. “What did you do?”

“I had to climb in the window,” John said. “Your door was locked from the inside. I thought you were dead in here.” He considered it. “I might have panicked a little.”

“Oh my God,” Rodney said. “Carter—“

“I’m getting blood all over your bathroom floor,” John said. “Sorry. I’ll clean it up later.” He rolled onto his back with some difficulty, trying unsuccessfully not to whimper. “I gotta go, Rodney,” he said tightly, trying to push himself up. 

He dropped the phone trying to hang it up, and rolled back onto his side, crying out at how much it hurt. He’d left it too long. He couldn’t sit up. Fuck. Rodney’s door was still locked from the inside. He was fucked, he was so fucked. 

A bright, bright light came from the living room and was gone as soon as it had started. He couldn’t turn and look, couldn’t move. Darkness was clawing at the edges of his vision and he kicked out a little, trying to push it back, trying to sit up, but to no avail. He couldn’t do it.

Well, _shit_.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (*Author’s note: this is true. I live in a first-ring suburb like a hundred feet from the city line and had been here about three months when they rolled up with a truck and shoved off one of those giant garbage totes for each house on my block too. Now I don’t know where the rats have gone.)


	18. Transfusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All in all, things go pretty well.
> 
> Smut! Finally.

Rodney still wasn’t used to beaming. His living room appeared around him, and he blinked, blinded by the brightness. “Ow,” he said. “How do you get used to the blinding light?”

“Oh,” Carter said, “you close your eyes. Sorry, most of us just do, I didn’t think to warn you.”

“Ow,” Rodney said, and stumbled into his coffee table, rubbing his eyes. He looked around. “John?”

There was no answer, and he turned around in place, clutching Sam’s phone, which had disconnected during the beaming. “In here,” Sam said from the bathroom door. 

The bathroom was all tiled in tiny, antique black and white octagons. John’s blood was a shocking red under the bright white compact-fluorescent lightbulbs. He was lying on his side, curled loosely, and the blood was smeared everywhere. 

“Oh my God,” Rodney said. Sam had stepped over him and was crouching behind him, two fingers on his neck. 

“His pulse is pretty thready,” she said. “I think he’s been bleeding a while.”

“Uh, you think?” Rodney’s annoyance overcame his paralysis and he knelt next to John. “You idiot!”

John stirred, peeling his eyes open with an effort. “R’ney?” His face was dead white and his hair was stuck down to his forehead with sweat. Rodney took his face between his hands and pushed the hair away from his clammy skin. “How’d you get in? Th’door’s locked fr’th’ _inside_.”

“I’m sorry,” Rodney said. “I didn’t get a chance to grab my phone and I didn’t realize how long I’d been gone.”

Carter was talking into her radio. Rodney remembered he had her phone. He fumbled it out. “I got it,” Carter said, taking the phone from his shaking hand. 

John was trying to talk but didn’t seem to be able to. “Shh,” Rodney said, nearly frantic. “John, don’t— we’re going to get you some help.”

“Okay,” John said, letting his eyes sink closed. Rodney closed his own eyes for a moment, and suddenly everything went white, then dark, then white again, and when he opened his eyes he was in a well-lit room with a linoleum-tile floor and people in SGC uniforms looking curiously at them. 

“Wha— oh,” Rodney said. Of course Carter hadn’t called an ambulance. Oh. 

 Carter had stood and was talking to one of the staff. Rodney sat, feeling very much behind the ball, with John’s head cradled in his lap. John made a few valiant attempts to get his eyes open, finally succeeding and giving Rodney a bewildered look. 

“I broke into your apartment,” John said dazedly. “‘Msorry.”

“It’s okay,” Rodney said. 

“Thought you were abducted by aliens,” John went on, and actually giggled. 

“You total spaz,” Rodney said, helplessly in love with him in that moment. 

“He’ll still need a blood transfusion, I’m sure of that,” Carter said to someone, and knelt beside John, putting her fingers into the collar of his shirt. 

“No tags,” John said. “RH positive.” 

“Ah,” she said, pulling her fingers back out. “RH positive,” she said over Rodney’s shoulder. 

“Let’s get him onto a gurney, at least,” another voice said, and Rodney looked up at a couple of fairly burly orderlies. He got out of the way, hovering fretfully as John cried out in pain when they moved him. 

“Somebody really did a number on this guy,” a female medical person said, coming over to peer at him. “What’d you do, shoot him?”

“Someone else did,” Carter said. “Did they get it?”

“Yes, Jackson said he’d bring it,” the woman answered. 

“Bring what?” Rodney asked, staking out a spot near John’s head. 

Carter looked over at him. “Selmak’s healing device,” she said. “I see no reason not to do this the easy way.” John squinted at her. 

“I thought your doctorate was in astrophysics,” he said indistinctly, but clearly enough to be understood. 

“Oh,” Carter said, “it is.” 

“Don’t worry,” the woman next to her said, “ _I’m_ an actual doctor.” She pushed John’s sleeve up and rubbed the inside of his elbow with an alcohol wipe, then skillfully started an IV in the vein. Rodney flinched; it was a really big needle. The woman secured the needle with a deft loop of gauze and patted John on the shoulder. “You on any medication?”

“Yeah,” John said. 

Rodney immediately began listing all of John’s medications, dosages, and dosage intervals. The doctor stared at him sort of blankly for a moment when he had finished, then said, “Then I’ll hold off on giving you anything else.”

“Shouldn’t, um, there be some sort of, I don’t know, stitches or something?” Rodney asked. 

“Isn’t _your_ doctorate in astrophysics?” the doctor asked him, tilting her head. 

“I like this chick,” John said to Rodney, pointing his free hand at the doctor. 

“Hey, Sam,” Daniel Jackson said, jogging through the doorway. “This the guy?” He handed Sam a palm-sized gold circle with a big red resin stone in the middle. 

“Yep,” she said cheerfully. “He seems to have the self-preservation instincts of a betta fish, but you know how endearing I find that sort of thing.” She slid the device onto her hand. 

“Hey,” John said, “if you didn’t go around alien-abducting people, this sort of thing wouldn’t happen.” 

“I had nothing to do with the original bullet wound,” Sam said. “Now hold still, and don’t be alarmed. This might hurt.”

“What are you doing?” Rodney yelped, as the thing on her hand began to glow. He’d read reports of hand devices. 

“Relax, McKay,” Sam said, face going blank with concentration. She held the device a few inches above John’s side and the glow intensified. 

“Holy shit,” John said tightly, body going rigid. Rodney started forward, but Jackson grabbed him by the shoulders, gently but firmly, and held him in place. 

“It’s a healing device,” Jackson explained, not unkindly. “Yes, it’s of Gou’auld make, but it is beneficial, and unlike the sarcophagi, it has no known unpleasant side effects.”

“The fuck is a Gooawadoodle,” John grunted, squinting up at them.

Carter and Jackson both laughed at that. Carter made one more pass with the device, and peeled John’s bloody shirt gingerly up and away from his body. “How’s that?” she asked. 

“Doesn’t hurt,” John said. 

“Let me,” the doctor said, neatly removing the bandages. She wiped away the blood, and revealed a swathe of shiny pink freshly-healed skin. “Wow.” The remaining staples and stitches had all worked themselves up and out of the skin, and she wiped them away along with the blood. There was no longer a jagged seam, only an area of unusually featureless skin.

“Holy shit,” John said, shoving himself up on the elbow that wasn’t IV’d. “What the— what did you do?”

“I just alien-abducted your bullet wound,” Carter said, smug and perky. And maybe Rodney was completely besotted with John but that didn’t mean Carter wasn’t incredibly hot, especially when she did shit like that. 

John poked at the shiny skin. “Holy fuck,” he said. 

“You should still lie there and not move until that whole unit of blood is in you,” Carter pointed out. She slipped the device off her hand, and Jackson took it from her. 

“What is that thing?” John asked. “And seriously, what’s a Goowaaoowaaood?”

“I liked Gooawadoodle better,” Jackson said. “I’m going to try that on Ba’al next time I see him.”

“I’m hoping there isn’t a next time,” Sam said with an eloquent shudder.

The doctor poked at John some more, then patted him on the shoulder. “Well,” she said. “Looks like my work here is pretty much done. Stay put and let that bag empty and I’ll check on you in a little bit.”

“Okay,” John said, watching her walk away. He tipped his head back, then, and looked at Rodney. “Hey,” he said, grinning. “Where the fuck are we?”

Jackson exchanged a look with Carter. “Hoo boy,” he said. He looked at Rodney. “How much does he know?”

“Precious little,” Rodney said, grimacing.

John eyed the IV bag. “From experience, I can tell you we’ve probably got like forty-five minutes until this thing is done, so pull up chairs, everybody.”

“Has he,” Carter began.

“He hasn’t signed anything,” Rodney sighed. “He said he didn’t want his name in writing anywhere, and he didn’t want to know.”

Carter fixed him with a keen look. “Well,” she said, “I just alien-abducted you to save your life.”

“Which was in danger because you also alien-abducted my boyfriend,” John countered. 

She tilted her head. “Point,” she said. “Well, Daniel, you are better at this than I am. I will go and get an NDA, and you fill him in.”

 

John had been about right, the blood transfusion took close to an hour to finish up. The doctor took his vitals, looked surprised a bit, took a few blood samples (“Isn’t that sort of missing the point of the transfusion?” John had asked, to no avail), and let him go. Both Rodney and John wound up in uniforms, since both of them had gotten rather covered in blood. And then they were released. 

John looked surprisingly un-traumatized by all of it. Jackson had given him a pretty good rundown of the various alien races, the current events in the galaxy at large, and a basic overview of everything they knew about the Ancients. Now he was hovering sort of oddly just far enough away to be somewhat respectful of John’s personal space. 

“What,” John said finally, straightening up after tying his boots. 

“You have the gene,” Jackson said. 

“Yes,” John said. 

“He wants you to touch stuff,” Rodney said, disgusted. “Aren’t you, like, best buds with O’Neill? Doesn’t he touch stuff for you?”

John smacked Rodney’s arm, eyes wide. “Tch! Don’t ask, don’t tell,” he said, deadpan, though the twitch of his lip gave him away. 

Jackson looked startled for a split-second before he caught on— though it was more likely that he read it in Rodney’s face than John’s. “Ha ha,” he said. “Yes, O’Neill has tried to initialize most of the devices we have here, but he’d tried with the ones we sent to you too, McKay, and Sheppard got one of them to work kind of amazingly well when O’Neill hadn’t been able to get anything out of it. It seems clear to me that your expression of the gene is completely distinct from his, which is fascinating in its own right but more pointedly, gives us a completely separate potential point of access to all of this technology.”

“Buy me dinner first,” John said. 

“Actually,” Rodney said, “I am pretty hungry.”

Jackson pressed his lips together, but rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he said.

 

 

John was doing pretty well at controlling the freakout, he figured. He’d almost died on Rodney’s bathroom floor, then he’d been literally alien-abducted, miracle-cured (seriously, there wasn’t even a twinge. It was like he’d never been shot. He was afraid to ask if his spleen had grown back) and now knew almost everything there was to know about Earth’s apparently somewhat long-term history with the other occupants of this galaxy. And possibly beyond. 

The part that _was_ freaking him out was the uniform. It was really similar to a standard-issue Air Force utility uniform, only it was green. He felt naked in it with no tags, that was what was most jarring. No tags, and wearing civilian boots. 

However. Mess hall food was just about normal. That, he could remember. 

“Hey,” he said suddenly, pausing. 

“What?” Jackson gave him an odd look. 

“I can eat whatever I want,” he said. 

Jackson’s eyes darted to one side, then the other, as if looking for the punchline. “Yes?”

“I got shot in the gut like a week ago,” John said. “I’ve kind of been on a restricted diet.”

“Oh,” Jackson said. “Yes, that’s definitely fixed now.”

John took almost as much food as McKay, and ate a lot more of it than was strictly a good idea. “I’m gonna run ten miles tomorrow,” he told McKay. “I’m just warning you.”

Rodney eyed him warily. “I don’t know if that’s a lot.”

“That’s a lot,” Jackson said. 

“There you are,” a voice John had never heard before said. John expected the person must be speaking to one of the other two people at the table, since he had no idea who it was, but he turned and looked anyway, and the guy, iron-and-silver-haired, narrow-faced, in his fifties, was looking directly at John. “I wouldn’t’ve gotten out of bed but Carter wouldn’t stop talking about you.” 

The guy was a general, John realized suddenly, catching a glimpse of the star on his collar tab, and the reflex to stand up and salute was there, but he controlled it by main force. “Sir?” he said. 

“I’m Jack O’Neill,” the guy said. “And I hear tell you’re John Sheppard and your Ancient gene is stronger than mine.”

John eyed him warily. Oh, the guy was definitely about twenty-five years of combat experience poured into a steely cage of middle-age. Absolutely not someone to fuck with. Nobody had warned him. Why had nobody warned him? He reconsidered his earlier instinct and got to his feet. “What’s the protocol?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest. “Do I salute?”

“That’s totally up to you,” O’Neill said. “I’ve never particularly cared one way or the other. Carter was going on and on about what hot shit you are, though. Is any of it true?”

“I don’t know, sir,” John said. “She hasn’t said any of it to me.”

“The medlab just gave me a report that explains that your gene is completely different from mine,” O’Neill said, “indicating that we come from totally separate lines of descent.”

“How do they know that?” John asked, frowning, but it immediately hit him: the doctor hadn’t been taking blood samples to check for an allergic or immune reaction to the blood transfusion. He guessed when you had a miracle healing machine you didn’t need to worry about that sort of thing. “God damn it. That was quick work.”

“Not particularly,” O’Neill said, slight amusement giving his eye a bit of a glint. Christ, this guy would murder you with steady hands and crack wise the whole time. “We have very good people, here.”

“Now,” John said, “that I don’t doubt.” 

“Carter also says she’s been waiting for you to respond to her job offer,” O’Neill said. “Any particular reason you’re unsure, or what?” John didn’t answer, trying to mentally calculate how many days it had been. Not many. Measuring it in hours was still reasonable. “Don’t you miss flying?”

“That’s a low blow,” John said. “I quit for good reasons and they’re reasons I still have.”

“And you don’t miss flying,” O’Neill said. “Not even a little bit?”

“To my knowledge, flying’s not what’s on the table,” John pointed out. 

“We’d be idiots not to use any of your pilot training,” O’Neill said. “We got plenty of need of having things flown around. From your file, you can fly just about anything.”

“I can, sir,” John said. He shook his head. “But I can’t come back to the Air Force.”

“Why not?” O’Neill asked. 

“Because I promised I’d be there for my kid,” John said. “As it is I only see him one weekend a month. I’m not doing any less than that.”

“One weekend a month,” O’Neill said. “We could give you better than that. We’re not exactly getting deployed to the sand, here. And we have a whole lot of latitude in how we use our staff. Nobody who cares about those kinds of regulations knows about this organization at all. Hell, if you want to commute home to that kid every night we could make that happen.”

John stared at him. “I don’t even know what state we’re in right now,” he said. 

“Oh,” O’Neill said. “Colorado.” He waved a hand toward the ceiling. “We don’t always have a ship in orbit with a beaming system, so sometimes it’s a little more of a hassle to go long distances, but we’ve got plenty of pretty insane tech at our disposal. Whatever we have to do to get you to come around, we can do.”

John glanced around the room. There was not a soul in the mess hall; there had been another table of uniformed guys and one woman, evidently just geared down from a mission from their animated discussion, but they’d gone, and the staff had retreated into the kitchen. He looked back at O’Neill, and steeled himself.

“What about the gay thing?” he asked. 

O’Neill didn’t miss a beat; he laughed and said “I have _aliens_ working for me, Sheppard, and some of them have such complicated reproductive cycles I can’t even understand them. Two guys is so refreshingly _normal_. Just don’t put your ovipositors in each other’s thoraxes in front of anyone without clearance to know about ‘em and if you can keep your spawn cycles to yourself I’d be thrilled, from a purely personal standpoint, but that’s about it as far as the policy goes around here.”

“Ovipositors,” John said blankly.

“Or whatever,” O’Neill said. 

“I just don’t want to have to lie,” John said. “I don’t like to lie.”

“I’d prefer if you didn’t,” O’Neill said. “Like I said. Anyone who’s dumb enough to care about those kinds of regulations is too dumb to get clearance to know about this organization at all.”

“What about the people you report to?” John asked. 

O’Neill smiled. “I’m in charge,” he said. “I give reports to people, sure, but at this level, most of what I have to worry about are civilian oversight boards and committees and the like. Most of them aren’t even American. They care a lot about rules and lawyer things, but they haven’t even read the Uniform Code of Military Justice, nor do they care to.”

“Oh,” John said. 

“So think it over,” O’Neill said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I’ll be in touch. Meanwhile go poke things for Daniel before the poor guy explodes.”

 

 

 

 

By the time they beamed back down into Rodney’s living room the sun had come up. Rodney was stumbling with exhaustion, going on two days without sleep at this point. He opened his eyes as John said, “Holy fuck,” but it was just a delayed reaction on John’s part, not anything particularly horrifying about Rodney’s living room. 

“Yeah,” Rodney said. 

“Did you see that ship we were just on?” John asked. “I mean, that was so cool, I barely got a chance to look at it— we were in _space_ , Rodney.”

“Yes,” Rodney said, “we were.”

“Holy shit,” John said, and Rodney blinked sleepily at him and realized this was the most hyper he’d ever seen John. As the thought made its cumbersome way across his mind, John suddenly lunged at him, grabbed him, and mashed him up against the bedroom doorway, shoving his tongue down Rodney’s throat and pressing his body up against him. 

“Oh,” Rodney gasped when his mouth was next, fleetingly, free: John was healed, which meant— “All those things you were talking about—“

“Oh yeah,” John said, grinding his— oh, that was a full erection, against Rodney’s hip, ohh wow. John tasted like bitter black coffee and hot, hot sex. “I should mention,” John murmured, hoarse and low in Rodney’s ear, “I have a pretty short refractory period and I’m perfectly capable of spending most of today inside you.”

“Oh God,” Rodney moaned helplessly. 

“So I hope you have lube,” John said, unfastening Rodney’s pants, “and I hope you didn’t have any other plans for the next few hours,” his hand was down Rodney’s pants now, closing around Rodney’s cock, “and I hope you want this as bad as I do, because I’ve been thinking about this for days.”

“Yes,” Rodney said, “yes,” it was kind of difficult to navigate across the bedroom floor while simultaneously stripping clothing off himself and off John while John was jerking him off, “yes,” but he managed, and fell onto the bed with John’s lean naked body between his legs, John’s teeth grazing his ribs, his hipbone, John’s mouth on his cock, lube and condoms out of the drawer and onto the pillow, John’s slick fingers sliding one at a time into his asshole.

John had Rodney flat on his back, knees up, and was alternately devouring his mouth and watching his face with almost predatory attention. “I want you, God I want you,” John murmured, his voice a low growl that made the back of Rodney’s neck prickle, “I wanna take you, I wanna fuck you— gotta be around here somewhere,” he twisted his fingers and Rodney’s whole spine seized as a jolt of pleasure shot up it like lightning, “yeah, like that—“ 

“Oh God,” Rodney sobbed, “God— ahh—“ John did it again, whatever it was, and he writhed in pleasure, “oh God, John— yes— ”

“There it is,” John said, satisfied, “oh Rodney, I’m gonna fuck you so good.” 

“Do it,” Rodney begged, whimpering as John took his fingers away, “God, please, fuck me,” and he’d never asked anyone for that before, he’d never wanted it like that, he’d never quite understood it even when he’d fantasized about it, fantasized about John’s hard body and hard cock and soft mouth— “Oh!” 

John’s cock was pushing, blunt and enormous, at his opening, and even as Rodney reacted to it, he’d already worked himself in and was sliding in slowly, slickly, relentlessly giving Rodney the entire length, and Rodney groaned, low and guttural and needy, feeling his body opening up and being filled.

“Yeah?” John said, hands on Rodney’s hips, still pressing in slowly, God his cock was so enormous, it felt like he was sliding along Rodney’s spine up into his chest, like he was taking Rodney’s whole body, possessing him, and he still wasn’t even all the way in.

“Aauuuunghh,” Rodney said articulately, grabbing at John’s hip, his shoulder, tipping his head back and gasping for breath as John’s cock forced the air out of his lungs. “Oh! Ohh. Fuck. Yes!”

“Yeah,” John said, low and satisfied, “oh, fuck, Rodney, you’re taking it so good, your body’s amazing— _oh_ yeah,” and he was all the way in. He spent a long moment kissing Rodney aggressively, taking possession of his mouth, and Rodney whimpered in desperate pleasure at the feeling of John’s tongue filling him from one end and his cock from the other. Rodney was completely owned, possessed, taken; he belonged utterly to John in that moment, every single nerve ending wrapped around him and under his sole control. 

John started to fuck him, then, and Rodney shuddered at how good it felt, his whole body moving with it, God, it had never been like this from the other end, he’d never felt so connected to someone while he was fucking them, this was a completely different experience. It felt good, it felt so good, it felt like his whole body opening up, unfolding, being filled— it felt like his heart was opening, all of him, unfolding in trembling petals like a flower, sparks of pleasure tingling along every nerve and setting him alight from the inside out.

 John let go of his mouth and scraped his teeth down the edge of Rodney’s jaw, down his neck, making Rodney shiver and jerk his spine a little straighter and oh— oh holy shit— the changed angle meant that John’s cock was rubbing against something that made Rodney’s breath howl out of his lungs, made his spine lock into an arch, “oh my God, oh my God, oh yes, oh John _oh_ , oh, _oh fuck_ —“

John bit his shoulder and drove in harder, just there, just there, “Yeah Rodney, yeah—“ taking him, overwhelming him, losing control to him, “Oh Rodney, you— oh— so good— so perfect—” 

“Oh wow,” Rodney said, as John’s body jerked and shuddered against his, into his; he could feel the pulse and throb of John’s orgasm through his whole body, in his gut, in his chest, in his throat, all pulsing to the same rhythm as John’s hips stuttered, as John cried out, his fingers wrapped around the back of Rodney’s neck, holding his shoulder, arms clamping Rodney’s body tight to his, “oh wow,” and Rodney was alight with wonderment at it, to feel another person like this, inside him and blended with him— “oh, John, oh.”

John’s body kept moving, slower and gentler, and his forehead came to rest against Rodney’s shoulder. “Rodney,” he panted, dazed, almost plaintive. 

“Yes,” Rodney said. John’s one hand stayed wrapped around the back of Rodney’s neck, but his other hand closed around Rodney’s erection, which up to now had sort of been peripheral to the whole process. “Oh holy fuck,” Rodney said, head snapping back, cradled in John’s grip, as John’s hips rocked into him and hand moved over him and lit up every nerve like the fireworks on the [First of July](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Day), a little chain of explosions up his spine and he was there, gone, subsumed entirely by it. 

 

When John pulled out Rodney thought he should have felt hollow, but he didn’t, he still felt filled, felt whole, felt connected, and when John came back to the bed with a handful of tissues and kissed him all over his neck as he wiped them both down, Rodney wrapped his arms around him and pulled him down. “John,” he said. 

“Mm,” John said, pushing his face into the hollow of Rodney’s neck. 

“I didn’t know it would be like that,” Rodney said, a little shaky. 

John’s hand slid around the back of his neck again, fingers gentle against the base of his skull. “Mm,” he said again, rubbing his face against Rodney’s shoulder.

“You’re amazing,” Rodney said. John sighed, a contented sound, very heavy against Rodney, limp and trusting. This was about as much as he’d ever said post-orgasm, Rodney remembered. He wasn’t much of a pillow-talker. Fondness swamped Rodney like the tide coming in, and he kissed John’s head and let himself slide off toward sleep as well. 

 

 

 

 

 

“John,” Nancy said the instant she picked up the phone, “you had me so worried. What the heck was going on? One-word texts weren’t particularly helpful there.”

“Sorry,” John said. “We were kind of in the middle of something. Rodney had been called in kind of urgently, is what had happened. And they needed, well. It’s a long story. The main thing is, everyone’s fine.”

“Well,” Nancy said, “good. But that doesn’t make much sense.”

“Well, no,” John said. “But… well, this part is also good but you probably won’t like it much, because a lot of it is classified.”

“Classified,” Nancy said. “I hate that word.”

“And I understand why,” John said. “But here’s the thing. The Air Force is calling me up again, but not— let me finish— only part-time. I’m going to go into the National Guard, kind of, but for really specific stuff. So I’m staying where I am and doing what I’m doing, but instead of crazy overtime shifts as a cop, I’m doing the typical weekend-a-month, two-weeks-a-year thing for the Air Force, doing really highly specialized stuff, and I’m nondeployable, and I’m reinstated as a major, and I don’t have to relocate.”

“Oh,” Nancy said. 

“So I can take Joey two weekends a month, I’ll know pretty consistently in advance when I won’t be available so no more last-minute cancellations, and,” John finished with a dramatic pause, “I get to fly again.”

“Oh my God,” Nancy said. “Oh John. That’s amazing!”

“The downside is that it’s all incredibly classified and I can’t even tell you a word about what I’m doing,” John said. “But. The pay’s decent, there's a great signing bonus, and all my prior time still counts toward retirement and all that good stuff.”

“Wow,” Nancy said. 

“Oh,” John said, “you don’t know the half of it.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, yes, yes, the John whump was all a transparent ploy to get him magic-healed so that there could be some athletic fucking. I'm not the most subtle person ever. But it wasn't my Deus Ex Machina machine, so I don't have to take credit for the lazy writing. :)


	19. Eat You Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was originally a self-indulgent porny fragment that just kept going.   
> So now it's a self-indulgent porny epic.   
> It's pretty much porn without plot. John proves that he wasn't just bragging, he really can go all night. Or day, in this case.  
> There's a little break where he takes Rodney on a date, as well.   
> None of the plot points I'd meant to hit actually happen, though. I'm sort of having some trouble working out the logistics of how the next major plot point is going to take place, and so I'm sort of procrastinating by writing yet more smut.   
> I like smut, though, so I don't have a ton of motivation to get past this roadblock. I'll get there eventually. Meanwhile, here's yet another shade on the spectrum of John's hilariously inarticulate afterglow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This picks up almost immediately after the end of the previous chapter.

 

 

John pulled the curtains out of the dryer and hung them back up immediately, so they wouldn’t get wrinkled. The throw rugs were still a little damp, so he hung them over the backs of the kitchen chairs. He was going to mop anyway, so there was no point in putting them back down yet. He finished wiping down the kitchen counter tops, scrubbed the rangetop really well, and then put lunch together. There hadn’t been a peep out of Rodney all morning, so he went and leaned in the bedroom doorway. 

Rodney had sprawled out in his sleep, kicking off the blankets partway, and the sun through the curtains gleamed on the pale skin of his back and shoulder. John went in as if compelled, and sat carefully on the edge of the bed, fitting his hand carefully around the curve of Rodney’s neck where it met his shoulder. His shoulders were so broad, so round; John drew his fingertips gently across the soft skin there, down his back, toward his ass. 

“Mmngh,” Rodney said, not moving. John grinned, and tugged the sheet away a little bit, replacing his fingers with his mouth. He kissed his way down Rodney’s spine, to the little divots in his back just above where his ass began. “Mmm,” Rodney said, a little less complain-y. John let his mouth open a little more, put his tongue out a little bit to taste Rodney’s skin, moving his hand across Rodney’s back. 

This was all in confirmation of John’s initial hypothesis, which was that being with a man wasn’t all that different from being with a woman. It probably depended on the man, and on the woman, but in this case, Rodney’s skin was paler but no less soft than Nancy’s, and while he tasted like a different person, it wasn’t like he was in his own category, he was just a different person. The part where he had a dick was different, the part where he had boring man-underwear was different (though John knew fine well Nancy only wore fancy underwear when he was around; the lacy stuff usually smelled like the lavender sachets in the dresser drawer, and the boring cotton stuff smelled like laundry detergent and her body. He sometimes wondered if it was his actual presence that had finally doomed their marriage, when she no longer had a reason to bother celebrating his homecomings by taking the lacy stuff out of the drawer where it lived most of the time. But he really only wondered it when he was depressed, which he wasn’t at the moment).

It was mostly the part where he was _Rodney_ that was different. 

“Time ‘zit,” Rodney mumbled into the pillow. 

“Lunch,” John answered, and nipped just a little bit with his teeth at the very top part of the curve of one of Rodney’s perfect buttocks. Rodney really wasn’t a particularly hairy dude, and what there was was pretty pale. He looked kind of like a Titian painting, especially in this light, all luminous pale skin and sleek curves, and he tasted awesome, faintly salty and warmly fragrant. 

“I am not lunch,” Rodney said, turning his head a little. John flattened his hand out across Rodney’s shoulder, holding him down so he couldn’t turn over and retaliate, and bit a little more firmly at the fullest part of his buttock. Rodney squeaked. “I am not lunch!”

“I could eat you up,” John said, laughing, and pushed the blankets farther out of the way, exposing Rodney’s powerful thighs, nipping at the crease where his buttock met his leg. Unbidden the thought of a line from one of the books he’d read to Joey often enough to have memorized it sprang to mind: _We’ll eat you up— we love you so_.

“Agh,” Rodney said, flailing ticklishly. John let up just enough so he could wrestle him back down and pin him to the bed. Rodney was pretty strong, probably stronger than he realized— and if it came to brute force, he’d probably be able to put out more actual power than John could, over the short haul anyway— but he had no training, no practice, no actual idea how to fight. It was obvious most of his fighting practice had been as a small child; he had no idea how to use those powerful shoulders to any kind of advantage, and John pinned him pretty easily. Of course, Rodney wasn’t really trying all that hard either; just hard enough that John could enjoy the actual miracle of his completely functional abdominal muscles. And with only a week or so’s worth of atrophy, he had basically no rehab to do. 

He got Rodney flattened down to the bed and lay across his back, working one thigh in between Rodney’s. Rodney instantly went limp, submissive, and that last little realization went right through John’s gut straight to his dick. “Mmm,” he groaned, grinding his erection down against Rodney’s asscheek. 

“Oh my God,” Rodney said, “didn’t we just— really?”

“I told you,” John said, making sure to breathe it right into Rodney’s ear, “I warned you.” 

Rodney sighed, not at all succeeding in sounding put-upon. “This is a terrible fate,” he said. “I am doomed to die by incredible sex.”

“The little death is repeatable,” John said. “It’s my favorite kind.” He bit Rodney’s neck, and Rodney squeaked and shivered thrillingly. 

“How many times is it repeatable, is the crucial question,” Rodney said. John worked Rodney’s thighs further apart with his leg, humping against his ass just a little bit just for the satisfying pressure.

“I think my record over a twenty-four-hour period is, hmm…” John considered it. He kind of had a lot of experience at marathon sex. Most of his relationship with Nancy had been really long dry spells broken by… well, sex monsoons, to continue the metaphor, but he decided saying that out loud might kill the mood by making Rodney laugh until he cried. “Well, I guess it depends. You want stats on duration, or number of incidents, or what?”

“I had sex twice in one night once,” Rodney said. 

“ _That’s_ your record?” John asked, raising his head from sucking on the junction of Rodney’s neck and shoulder.

“Well, in the doubles event,” Rodney said. 

That surprised John into letting out a snort-bray, his least attractive laugh. Its only upside was that it was so intrinsically hilarious unto itself that it made him laugh harder, which weakened him enough that Rodney was able to escape and roll him over and pin him in return. 

“So what’s your singles record?” John asked when he could talk again, letting Rodney hold him down by his wrists and noting with some satisfaction that Rodney was pretty well all the way hard too. He could escape this hold pretty easily, but with Rodney’s flushed-pink triumphant face and sparkling blue eyes hovering above him— and Rodney’s glorious ass pressed down against his pelvis, quite nice pressure on his erection— he had absolutely no incentive to. 

Rodney shrugged. “Eh,” he said. “I could do it pretty much incessantly as a teenager. Once you’ve actually been with another person a lot of the shine comes off that sort of thing.”

John laughed, his normal human laugh this time, and wriggled in Rodney’s grasp, mostly to rub his erection up against Rodney’s ass. “I think my doubles record is around twelve times in 24 hours,” he said.

“Were you sixteen?” Rodney asked, incredulous. 

“No,” John said, a little smugly. “I think I was 30.” That was a stretch, he’d been 25 if he’d been a day, but it was worth the white lie to see Rodney’s reaction. He’d managed ten, at thirty, so it wasn’t off by much. “It was after a deployment. It’s hard to work up the enthusiasm for that sort of thing when you see the other person every day.” 

“I can’t imagine how sore you’d be,” Rodney said a little wonderingly. 

John took advantage of the distraction, and the sheer astonishing size of the king-size bed, to roll Rodney over and pin him easily again. “You’d be amazed what a little lube can do,” he said. “It’s probably not fair to compare, really; a woman pretty much has no upper limit on quantity of orgasms, and guys just can’t do that. She got off a hell of a lot more than twelve times, I can assure you.” He went to work on Rodney’s mouth, then his jaw. “If it was possible, though, I’d do it to you,” he added, and Rodney moaned a little, writhing with absolutely no intent to get free. 

Rodney had so little interest in getting free that John managed to shed all his clothes without their relative positions changing, and lube up his fingers and explore Rodney’s no-longer-quite-so-virginal asshole. He was prepared to abandon that avenue of exploration if Rodney was too sore from earlier, but he didn’t seem to be. 

The prostate wasn’t quite exactly like the G-spot, but it was pretty similar, judging by Rodney’s awesome noises and the way his whole body jerked whenever John found it. John’s experience was deep but not broad; not all women could but Nancy was the kind of chick who could get off like crazy just from G-spot stimulation once you had her turned on enough, and he had a vague inkling that some guys could do the same with the prostate, but he had no real notion if it worked the same way. But Rodney seemed to like it— 

okay, seemed to really like it— 

okay really really _really_ liked it. “Fuck me,” Rodney begged, nearly sobbing, “oh my God, fuck me, do it _now_ ,” and John had no particular incentive not to, and one really really compelling (hard) (kind of throbbing) reason to do so. 

 It only took him a couple of tries to get the angle just right so he could keep doing with his cock what he’d been doing with his fingers, and Rodney made a whole bunch of noise and bucked and shuddered and squeezed John’s cock with his tight, slick asshole. “God,” John said intelligently, “oh God, you— yeah— Rodney!” 

Rodney shook and moaned and made all kinds of awesome noises, face gone blank and eyes wide, head tipped back, and John fucked him as hard and precise as he could manage, even as the rising tide of his own pleasure lifted him up, coursing through him as his heart pounded harder, harder, faster. 

“Come on,” John panted, biting his lip, “aah, come on.”

Rodney yelled, shuddered, and came so hard he almost got John in the face. “Jesus,” John said helplessly, as his body kept going without his input, slamming harder into Rodney as Rodney bucked and writhed and sobbed and clenched, still coming, “oh my God, Rodney, oh my God, holy _fuck_ ,” John’s heart was going to explode right out of his chest, but then he was coming too, long and hard until he saw stars. 

He stopped paying attention then, pretty much collapsing like a puppet with its strings cut. For a little while it was all just breathing, hearts beating, respiration, sweat, skin, that sort of thing, but after a bit Rodney started talking and moving and rearranging them and pulling the condom off John and seeming sort of grossed out about it and whatever. There was a tissue, there were some blankets, John stared blankly at nothing, blissed-out and drifting spacily. 

Eventually he came down off his endorphin/oxytocin/whatever high enough to resume interaction with the world, and sat up on his elbows. Rodney was sitting on the other side of the bed eating a sandwich. “You made lunch,” Rodney said, beaming. 

John laughed. “I did,” he said, and rolled over so he could reach the other plate. 

“I, um,” Rodney said. “That was, kind of awesome.”

“Good,” John said. “I thought so too.”

“Not that I wasn’t convinced I was gay yet,” Rodney said. “But, uh. Yeah.”

“Physical response like that doesn’t mean you’re gay,” John said. “But the fact that you wanted me to do it in the first place kind of does, yeah.” _Fuck. Don’t ask. Don’t ask._  

“Have you, um,” Rodney said, chewing a little fiercely. _Fuck_. He was going to ask. “You’ve done that before.”

“Right,” John said. “Not to a guy but that specific bit of anatomy is the same.”

“Right,” Rodney said. “Well, um. You’re good at it.” He gestured vaguely. “I, um. I feel like you know more about sex than I do, that’s all. Is that weird?”

“No,” John said gently. God, Rodney was adorable. “It’s not weird, Rodney. I probably know less about gay sex in particular than you do, but I was married to someone for a really long time. It’s pretty well-studied; married people have more sex than single ones.”

“So half of what I read is really convinced that, um, that gay people um…” Rodney gestured vaguely again. “That most people either top or bottom.” He blushed. “And the other half says that’s crap.”

Fuck, he _was_ asking. 

John chewed his lips carefully. “I will admit I don’t know anything about anything,” he said, “where that’s concerned, except that, um. There’s still a lot of stigma about being the kind of gay dude that, um, takes it. Like, that there’s something shameful about being quote-unquote the woman. And I’ll say first that I don’t feel that way. I don’t even think of heterosexual sex like that, why would I think of homosexual sex the same way?” 

“There’s a but in that sentence,” Rodney said. 

John stared at him, unable not to snigger. “You realize,” he said when he could speak without giggling, “you just said ‘butt’ in a conversation about anal sex.”

“You are twelve,” Rodney said, but restrained himself from throwing the pillow, since they were eating in bed and it would have made quite a different sort of mess than they’d already made of the sheets. 

John sighed. “You’re right, though,” he said. “I have, um. Sort of. Issues. Like that’s a surprise. And I’m not, I don’t really want to talk about them in any detail right now, but I promise I will at some point. And I’m um. Well. In theory I want to, um, I want you to do, um, what I just did. To you. To me. You know.”

“You want me to theoretically fuck your ass,” Rodney said. 

“That sounds dumb,” John said. “Intellectually?”

“You want me to intellectually fuck your ass,” Rodney said, inflection exactly the same. 

John squirmed a little. “No,” he said. “I want— I want you to be patient with me, a little, and— I want it, but I’m not—” 

“You’re not ready,” Rodney filled in. 

“Right,” John said. “And not because of,” he waved. “Shame or whatever. It’s not that. I just.” He swallowed, chewed his lips more. “I tried therapy. It was bad.”

“Well,” Rodney said after a long moment. “I’ll just have to trust that will eventually make sense.”

“Yes exactly,” John said, before realizing that Rodney had sort of been being sarcastic. “Um,” he amended, unable to think of a way not to sound like a total dork.

Rodney held up a hand. “I will take your word for it,” he said mercifully. 

John pushed his plate out of the way and leaned in to kiss Rodney thoroughly. “I promise,” he said, after he’d kissed him long enough that he tasted like himself and no longer like sandwich, “I promise I’ll work on it.”

“It’s okay,” Rodney said. “What I was trying to say was, if that’s how this works, I’m okay with that. If you just want to top. That’s what I meant.”

“Oh,” John said. He thought about it, then kissed Rodney some more, since he had been enjoying that for its own sake. “Okay,” he said. “Well, maybe for now. But I’ll. We’ll talk about it again later.”

“Sure,” Rodney said. After a little more kissing and rolling around, Rodney said, “Are you serious about this refractory period thing, because there is no way in hell I’m getting it up without a crane right now.”

John laughed. “I could,” he said, “probably, but I’m not trying to kill you.” 

“You could not,” Rodney said, indignantly skeptical. 

“Do you want me to prove it?” John asked. 

“It’s been like twenty minutes,” Rodney squawked. 

“Yeah,” John said. “It’s already been twenty minutes.”

“You _are_ serious,” Rodney said. 

John laughed, and rolled over and sat up. “I could be serious,” he said. He really was; he wasn’t hard, but his dick was sort of starting to think about it, what with all the rolling around and taste of Rodney and smell of Rodney and soft-firm body of Rodney and Rodney’s bed and Rodney’s mouth. “I’m not going to prove it. I have things to do. Remember I said I was going to run ten miles today.”

“You did say that,” Rodney said, sitting up and collecting himself. “You meant that too, huh?”

“Yep,” John said cheerfully, climbing out of bed and retrieving his clothes. He dressed efficiently, then paused, still shirtless, and added, “Oh, I’ve got Joey this weekend. I was thinking of having Thomas and maybe PJ over too.”

“Thomas?” Rodney asked. 

“Rachel’s kid,” John said. “He’s just a little bit older than Joey. They’re good friends.”

“Three first-grade boys,” Rodney said. 

“Yeah,” John said. “Are you in on this?”

“Shit,” Rodney said, “I guess so.”

John grinned. “Excellent,” he said. “I’ll call Dave, see if PJ’s free.” 

 

 

John didn’t run ten miles. His thighs were already kind of sore, what with all the fucking, and also he had too much to do today. He ran four miles instead, did an intensive set of crunches, sit-ups, and assorted ab work just because he could, which was insane, mopped and scrubbed the bathroom floor that was still all crusted with his blood, mopped the living room and kitchen floors, then went into the bedroom where Rodney was working. 

“Hey,” he said. Rodney was lying on his stomach in the bed, dressed in a t-shirt and boxers, laptop in front of him and chin propped on pillows. It sort of looked comfortable and sort of looked uncomfortable.

“Nuh,” Rodney said, distracted. 

Something struck John. “Your ass doesn’t hurt, does it?” Was that why he was lying in bed instead of sitting on the couch to work like normal?

“Nuh,” Rodney said again, still typing. He typed so fast it looked like he was only pretending, like in old hacker movies. 

John watched him for a minute, then took his shirt off. He hadn’t changed from his run, except to take his shoes off. Rodney still didn’t notice. John shifted carefully so he was within Rodney’s field of vision, and untied the drawstring on his track pants. He pulled the pants off, slowly, tossed them at the hamper with his shirt, then stood and pulled his socks off, one after the other. Rodney was still staring fixedly at the screen. Finally John peeled out of his sweaty underwear and tossed that at the hamper too. He stood naked, hands on hips, watching Rodney type.

“When’s quittin’ time for scientists?” he asked. 

“Mm,” Rodney said, then glanced up. “Minute,” he said, looking back down at the laptop screen. John waited patiently. In about fifteen seconds, Rodney’s eyes snapped back up onto him. “How long have you been standing there?” he demanded. 

“Hour or so,” John said. 

“You have not,” Rodney said, and this time he did throw a pillow at him. John caught it, and retaliated by hitting him with it and wrestling him down onto the bed without damaging the laptop, despite Rodney’s flailing. 

John pinned Rodney easily and turned it from a wrestling match into a makeout session, which was what he’d been planning all along, pretty much. He noted again that the way Rodney tipped his head back in surrender and let his eyes flutter shut pretty clearly indicated a particular set of preferences, and decided that was going onto the shortlist for experimentation. He mentally pinned it for perhaps early next week, once the weekend’s craziness was over. Naturally he already had handcuffs. They tended to be a crowd-pleaser. 

“You’re sticky,” Rodney said finally, running his hands along John’s flanks. 

“I was about to hop in the shower,” John said. “Now that I’ve got my gross post-run cooties all over you, I don’t suppose you’d care to join me?”

“Jesus, you’re like a rabbit,” Rodney said, not at all dismayed as he wriggled tactically, ascertaining that John had an erection. 

“I am not hung like a rabbit,” John said, mock-annoyed. 

“No no no no no,” Rodney said. “That is not what I said. I was referring to the frequency, not the duration or quality.”

John bit Rodney’s neck. “You don’t have to shower if you don’t want to,” he said. The skin was pretty salty, though; Rodney probably ought to wash. “I’m going to, and then I’m going to take you out on a date.”

“A date,” Rodney said, sounding stunned. 

“Yes,” John said. “At the very least, dinner.”

“Oh,” Rodney said. 

“So you don’t have to shower if you don’t want to, but I’m going to, and then I’m going to put on a pair of jeans without holes in them, and maybe a nice shirt,” John said. 

“I ought to shower, if we’re going to be in public,” Rodney said. 

“Then you should do it with me,” John said, sweetly reasonable. 

“Okay,” Rodney said. John kissed him, sweet but deep, and then climbed off of him. Rodney slapped his ass while it was still in reach. 

John went and started the water running to let it get hot. Rodney came in after a moment, a bit wide-eyed. “You cleaned a lot,” he said. 

“Had to do the floors,” John said, grimacing. “There was blood everywhere.” 

“But you— did you wash the _curtains_?”

“Yeah,” John said, “I had to do the throw rugs so I threw them in too to round out the load. They looked like they needed it anyway, they were a bit dingy.”

“I didn’t know curtains were a thing that needed washing,” Rodney said. 

“They did,” John said, and stepped into the shower. Rodney followed him after a moment, sliding in behind him and rubbing a soapy hand across his belly. 

John washed his own hair, then spent a little while making out with Rodney, rubbing soapy bodies together until he was so turned on he couldn’t stand it. Rodney pinned him gently against the wall and gave him the most incredible handjob of his _life_ , kissing him with gentle amusement as he shook and swore, and holding him up when he went boneless. 

“You’re heavy,” Rodney said, shutting the water off and manhandling John out of the tub. He was really strong, sturdy; John clung blissfully to him. On the clean bathmat, he dropped to his knees, but Rodney wrapped a towel around his waist, covering up his own flushed, stiff erection. “No no,” he said, “I’m saving this for later. I’m assuming you’re going to come home from dinner wanting a round twenty-nine or whatever we’re on, and I’m accepting my limitations and being aware that if I get off now, I’m just going to fall asleep for twelve hours.”

John laughed up at him, goofy and fond as Rodney dropped a clean fluffy towel over his head and scruffed at his hair. “I guess you are some kinda genius,” John said, and got up. He actually hadn’t really meant for there to be sex in the shower, he’d been thinking more along the lines of how nice it had been last time, when he’d been injured and Rodney had taken care of him. But it was literally years since he’d been with anybody, and his body was in sex-monsoon mode. Still. He wrapped his arms around Rodney and kissed him, and Rodney wrapped the towel around him. 

“Your afterglow is adorable,” Rodney observed. 

“I’m not always like this,” John said, thinking that the other side of the afterglow was how fragile he was internally, and wondering if Rodney was going to catch on to that too. He felt like he was all spun glass inside. “I mean, in general. I don’t usually act on every single sexual urge I have. It’s just that it’s been so long.”

“I figured,” Rodney said, kissing him a bit hungrily, and it was a weird perspective, to see Rodney on-edge and turned-on when he himself was wrung-out and endorphin-high. Rodney got it, Rodney got him, and John wrapped himself up in the clean throw blanket on the couch and let himself take a moment to gather up his internal shattered pieces.

Rodney puttered, looking out the windows and putting away the clean dishes from the dish rack and making frequent comments about how clean it was in here, and John sat and silently fell apart and put himself back together. His whole life was different, his whole identity— they were reinstating him as a major, some of his duties were going to include being a test pilot for something they’d been cagey and secretive about but had let slip involved goddamn _spaceships_ , he was gay now but that was totally cool, his boyfriend was among the ten people on the planet most conversant with the technology needed to stave off alien invasion, he wasn’t going to fall behind on his mortgage payments. And the whole idea of falling in love, which he’d almost casually sworn off the last time he’d fucked things up with Nancy, was obviously back on the table, with all its attendant exciting bonuses and absolutely terrifying risks. He’d figured he was over that, but there was his fucked-up, half-busted, messy heart lying in the middle of the table again kinda flopping around. And…he’d just had about as many orgasms in a week as he’d had in probably the entire year previous. 

It was kind of a lot to take in. 

“Your hair’s gonna dry like that, sunshine,” Rodney said eventually, coming up behind him and scritching at his scalp. John put his hands up as Rodney stepped away, and realized his hair was drastically sideways. He absent-mindedly fixed it, and Rodney sat next to him. Rodney was dressed already, in one of his seventeen identical pairs of khaki pants John had carefully folded out of the dryer so they wouldn’t need pressing, and a blue shirt that set off his eyes. Someone must have told him that was his color, because he owned about twenty shirts that color, but whoever it was hadn’t been wrong and John wasn’t complaining. Someone had once told him the same about Army green, though, and he’d figured they were just being an asshole about inter-service rivalries. 

Rodney leaned over and kissed him, sweet and brief. “Hey,” he said, “did you make your weekend arrangements?”

“Yeah,” John said, “I’m picking Joey up tomorrow morning first thing, Rachel’s dropping Thomas off around noon, and Dave’s gotta be in town anyway around two so he’s dropping PJ off around then.”

“That sounds like a full weekend,” Rodney said. “Hey, I got a couple things I need you to touch before the kids get here. The SGC sent me off with homework.”

“We’re goin’ in on Monday,” John said, frowning. 

“Yeah,” Rodney said, “but I have a couple things I need reports on by then.”

“Fine,” John said. He looked at the clock. “Get ‘em out, I’ll do it now.” He pushed to his feet and fished his good button-fly jeans out of a laundry basket, hunted for a decent shirt. He put on the jeans without underwear; he liked them better that way, but he’d gotten in the habit of wearing underwear for laundry-reduction purposes since there was nobody to appreciate the sexiness factor anyway. But with a boyfriend with in-unit laundry, the time had come for commando jeans-wearing again. 

Rodney came back out while John was still hunting for a shirt, lugging one of those hard-sided padded cases. He set it on the couch and opened it, and John came over to look at it. There were half a dozen small devices in there, at least one of which was already blinking. “We get the good stuff now, huh?” John asked. 

“I have a list,” Rodney said. “One of them, O’Neill got to turn on and said it was broken.” He pointed at the blinking one. “The next one, O’Neill said he didn’t want to touch it and had a bad feeling, and they didn’t push it. Number three, O’Neill couldn’t get to turn on but said he could feel it was part of a navigation device. Number four, O’Neill got it to turn on but it fritzed out again.”

“Wait wait,” John said, “let’s just do these one at a time.” He picked up the blinking one, and nearly dropped it. “Nnng. That one’s broken.” It had sent a not-electric almost-jolt up his arm straight to his molars, and he shivered. “There’s,” he said, squinting, “there’s a contact that’s broken in, um, the bit where you, um— the interface. It can’t— it’s giving, um— feedback. That’s what that is. Feedback.” He shivered again. “It’s a device for some kind of maintenance of some larger thing, I don’t know what, I can’t— ngghh.” He set it down hastily and rubbed the elbow of the hand that had been holding it. “Fuck, that— that hurt.” 

“Mm-hmm,” Rodney said, typing furiously. John shuddered again; his skin had come up all in goosebumps. He pulled on a t-shirt, letting his fingers run over the smooth section of skin where the gunshot wound had been. The hair had started to grow back, fine and downy like a child’s, and that was mildly unsettling. The skin felt normal apart from the hair, the nerves seemed to be working just as they had before, and it was utterly, utterly inexplicable. His doctor— aw shit, the guy was definitely going to freak out. He’d better remember to cancel that appointment. Easy enough to handwave away a change of insurance meaning a change of doctors, though. 

“Okay,” Rodney said, “next.”

John came back and put his hand out to pick up the second object, but as he got closer, a shiver went down his back and he pulled away. “No,” he said. 

Rodney looked up, looked over at the thing. “O’Neill wouldn’t say why,” he said. “Can you say why?”

John set his teeth and stepped closer, opening and closing his hand by his side. It took an effort to reach out again, and he felt the weird shiver again. “It’s, I’m pretty sure it’s warning me off,” John said, letting himself take a step back. 

“I touched it, though,” Rodney said. 

“You wouldn’t have activated it,” John reasoned. “So it’s inert, and not dangerous to you. I don’t know if this thing is broken or if it is part of some kind of warning system, but it is absolutely telling me in no uncertain terms that I should not touch it.” 

“Huh,” Rodney said. 

John wiped his hand on his pants, even though he hadn’t touched the thing and there was nothing on it. “I didn’t like that one,” he said. 

“We can do the others later,” Rodney said, and snapped the case back shut. “C’mon, I was promised a date.”

John grinned. “That you were,” he said, pulling Rodney to him as the other man stood up. He took Rodney’s mouth delicately, in a slow and lingering kiss that deepened and intensified. 

“Oh,” Rodney said eventually.

John laughed, licking Rodney’s lower lip and pulling back. Rodney was flushed, breathing hard. John was still languidly post-orgasmic, but he knew Rodney wasn’t, Rodney was totally turned-on. He smirked in anticipation of a long night of teasing. “So,” he said, hooking his fingers in Rodney’s belt and pressing his hip into Rodney’s, just a bit of pressure against— yes— Rodney’s semi-erection. “I figure, there’s this nice quiet out-of-the-way place just a few blocks down, might be a little crowded on a Friday but there’s always room somewhere, limited menu but all of it’s good, decent selection of beers on tap and even better in bottles. Think you could find something?”

“Yeah,” Rodney said hoarsely, fingers twitching at John’s waistband. 

“Cool,” John said, letting his breath tickle Rodney’s ear. “I’ll drive.” It was a walkable distance, but he didn’t want to spend fifteen minutes each way on the walk, especially since he planned on having Rodney so turned-on by the end of dinner that walking would be an issue. Rodney shuddered, leaned in a little, chasing contact with John as John pulled away with a deeply satisfied private grin. Oh yes. This was going to be like an hour of foreplay, at least.

It was also a kind of test. They knew John there, he went there all the time and sat at the bar by himself. He wanted to gauge their reactions to him suddenly turning up with a boyfriend. And in this state, there was no way Rodney was going to be able to play it cool.

The owner was at the hostess station, a petite beautiful woman with a buzz cut. “Hey, John,” she said. 

“Hey, Marianne,” he said. Over her shoulder he saw Adam behind the bar, and waved. “Gonna sit at a table tonight, if you got one.”

“I do,” she said, eyes sliding to Rodney. “I have a booth, if you’d like.”

“That’d be nice,” John said. “This is Rodney, he’s new in town.”

“Ah,” she said, “welcome,” grabbing two menus and leading them down into the deep, high-backed booths set down in the lower split-level of the antique building. The booths were wonderfully private, a great place to have a quiet conversation. She seated them, and as she walked away, gave John a wink.

There was the answer. It wasn’t just his coworkers, they’d pegged him as gay here too, or near enough not to be surprised. Huh. 

Well, at least he didn’t really have to come out to anybody, he supposed. 

 

 

He almost had to fuck Rodney in the car. By the time dinner was done, Rodney was alternating being excited about the food to being excited about John. And by then, John’s post-orgasm lassitude had completely dissipated, and he was in almost as bad a state as Rodney.

They made it out the door without incident, but as soon as they were in John’s car, Rodney grabbed him and started devouring his mouth, and only the fact that it was a stick shift and the gear lever was in the way kept John from yanking him into his lap. 

“It’s only about five minutes’ drive home,” John said breathlessly. 

“You can use your hard-on to steer,” Rodney pointed out. 

“Just about,” John laughed, and composed himself with some difficulty, enough to start the car, put it in gear, and get down the street. It took him just over three minutes to make the drive, and as he unlocked the front door to their building, Rodney pressed himself up against John’s back, all along the length, the hard ridge of his dick pressing against John’s ass, one hand sliding between the open front edges of John’s jacket, up under the hem of John’s shirt, letting the cold air in but Jesus he didn’t care, he was almost too unsteady to get the goddamn door unlocked. 

They stumbled inside, and Rodney caught John’s hips to steady him, winding up pressed against him from behind, John shoved up against the wall with Rodney’s enormously hard cock digging in to the crease between one thigh and asscheek. “Nngh,” John said, partly paralyzed by a sudden blinding desire to have that cock inside him, for Rodney to pull John’s head back and put his fingers in John’s mouth and hold him still and helpless, arched back, impaled— the image was as forceful as a thunderclap and as shocking. John had never in his life fantasized about anything of the sort before, but hell, he’d never fantasized that _vividly_ about anything either. 

“God,” Rodney said, and bit John’s shoulder before releasing him and stumbling to unlock his apartment door. 

John pushed himself shakily away from the wall, and followed Rodney inside. 

Things got put on pause for a moment while they took their shoes off and Rodney fed Cosmo, who was deeply annoyed at them for disappearing inexplicably again, because if he didn’t she’d bug them until he did, and he really wanted to give his undivided attention to what they were about to do, he explained. (John was starting to think in the same run-on sentences Rodney spoke in. It was alarmingly precious.) John leaned in the living room doorway and watched him, enjoying the way his regard made Rodney blush and stumble around clumsily. 

Once Cosmo was purring with her head buried in the food dish, Rodney grabbed John and dragged him into the bedroom. “If I don’t get off I’ll _die_ ,” he swore.

“That’d be terrible,” John drawled. “I swear, you’re like a rabbit. Didn’t we _just_ have sex?”

“Ha,” Rodney said, “oh, you slay me. Get over here, you insouciant hunk of walking sex, and _fuck_ me.”

“If you insist,” John answered, but his attempts at appearing unhurried were probably not very convincing as he pretty much ripped his shirt off. About then Rodney discovered the button fly and the lack of underpants behind it, and made a noise as if he’d just come in his pants as he dropped to his knees.

“Are you real?” Rodney demanded, popping the buttons open one at a time and shoving John back against the wall. “You’re not real.”

“I’m a _very_ convincing illusion,” John agreed, leaning back as Rodney unbuttoned his fly like unwrapping a present, on his knees on the floor in front of John, looking eager and greedy and hungry. John groaned and let his head thunk against the wall as Rodney swallowed his cock. “Oh my _god_.” After a bare minute or two of Rodney’s head bobbing enthusiastically, John said, a little strangled, “If you keep that up I’m going to come straight down your throat.”

Rodney gave him a wicked look from where he had his lips stretched around the base of John’s cock, and John bit his lips and fought down a shiver. “Jesus,” he managed breathlessly, cupping Rodney’s jaw in one hand, “that’s your best look, that should be your author photo if you write a book.”

It made Rodney laugh, which got him off John’s dick for a second, which let John grab him and manhandle him onto the bed and pin him down and hold him. “Or maybe your faculty headshot if you wind up teaching,” John mused, running a finger along Rodney’s swollen lower lip, holding both wrists with his other hand. He moved his hand down and got Rodney’s pants open, then pulled his shirt up, up over his head, then used it to wrap around his wrists and tangle it around the headboard so Rodney couldn’t easily get free. “Maybe your staff photo on the DOD website,” John went on, grinding his cock against Rodney’s thigh, Rodney’s cock sliding along his hip. “You just look so good with my dick down your throat.”

Rodney made an inarticulate noise, struggling but making no attempt whatsoever to get free. Yup, suspicions confirmed. John leaned back on his heels, peeling himself slowly out of his jeans, standing to kick them off, pulling Rodney’s pants down his thighs, then yanking off his boxers and socks. Rodney was naked except for the shirt around his forearms, gloriously naked. God, his skin was lickable. John crawled back onto the bed, biting Rodney’s calf, just inside his knee, nipping his way up his inner thigh. 

“I am not lunch,” Rodney squeaked. “God, you’re bitey. Doesn’t anybody feed you?”

“I’ll eat you up,” John said, laughing, and this time he finished the quote, “I love you so.”

 Rodney stilled for a moment at that, and John continued up, refusing to make that be a Significant Relationship Moment. First off, it was a quote from a children’s book, and secondly, it was true enough that it didn’t need examining. John grazed his teeth along the spot high on Rodney’s inner thigh where the hair faded to soft, smooth skin, making Rodney squeak and twitch ticklishly, then nuzzled at his balls, nosing up and licking along the underside of Rodney’s cock, moving up, then sucking the head into his mouth, trying to push the foreskin back with his lips. He had to use his hand on it; most things about gay sex wound up being pretty easy because he had the same parts, but the whole foreskin thing was unfamiliar. Fortunately, it seemed to be all nerves, and pretty much anything seemed to count as awesome. 

“Oh God,” Rodney whined, twisting his hips up. “Oh God.”

“I’d fuck you,” John said, pulling off his dick for a moment, “but I don’t know, your ass is probably too tender.”

“Oh,” Rodney panted, “yes, oh God, John, fuck me.”

“You think?” John raised an eyebrow at him, licked his fingers and moved down to slide one into Rodney’s ass. He could get two in pretty much right away, and he sucked almost absently on Rodney’s cockhead as he pushed them in, wriggling experimentally. Rodney squeaked, shivered, and bore down against his hand, taking his fingers in all the way with a greedy push. John crooked his fingers and easily found the bit that must be Rodney’s prostate, since it had been making him twitch and squeal all day and did so quite satisifactorily now as well. 

“Yes,” Rodney moaned, “yes, please, give it to me, please.” 

“Well then,” John said, and worked at him a little more with his mouth and his hands, working Rodney up into a fine state. He had to stop to get the lube, though, as spit wasn’t going to cut it even with Rodney as turned-on as he was. So far that was about the only thing John missed about heterosexual sex— self-lubrication. Well, that and multiple orgasms, though he wasn’t entirely opposed to the role-switch that meant he was the more-orgasmic partner. Still, Nancy had once come for like half an hour straight, and that was the kind of thing that was indelible in one’s personal sexual Hall of Fame. 

But, John reflected, getting three lubricated fingers into Rodney’s ass and watching Rodney struggle deliberately-ineffectually against the impromptu restraint of his shirt around the bedframe, he was probably going to have to build an entire new wing of said Hall, and dedicate it to this particular hot astrophysicist. “Fuck me,” Rodney begged. 

John grinned, licking one last time at Rodney’s cock, and sat up to get a condom. “You’d better be careful,” he told Rodney mock-seriously. “You don’t want to get me in the habit of thinking your ass is insatiable.”

“I want you in me,” Rodney said, almost desperate. “I want you to fuck me. I want to feel you come in me.”

“Are those your three wishes?” John asked, smirking. His fingers were too slippery to get the damn condom wrapper open, and he fumbled at it with increasing annoyance. 

“I hope I get more than three,” Rodney said, recovering a little bit of coherence now that John wasn’t at this very moment literally pressing the button to short-circuit his nervous system. 

“Oh,” John said sweetly, “you do. God damn it,” he amended, as the foil packet slipped out of his fingers again. 

“God,” Rodney said, “don’t even bother, I’m clean, I’m basically a virgin, come on. I’ve actually never had unprotected sex in my entire life, I want to try it.”

John considered it for a second, looking from the stubborn little packet to the glistening, pink temptation of Rodney’s ass to the dark red, hard length of Rodney’s erection. “I had a blood transfusion yesterday,” John said. “I know they screen that stuff but I don’t want to find anything out the hard way.” 

Rodney looked conflicted, and John had to stop what he was doing and bend down to kiss him. “We’ll put it on the list for later,” he murmured into Rodney’s ear. “Along with handcuffs, maybe spanking, maybe you fucking me? I got a long list, Rodney.”

Rodney squirmed happily. “I like that list,” he said. 

“Then don’t change the channel,” John said, smirking at him as he sat back up and finally managed to get the condom open. “Stay tuned, it’s all comin’ up right here.”

Despite Rodney’s eagerness, John was keenly aware that this was kind of a lot of abuse for an inexperienced ass, so he was pretty generous with the lube and went slow. Rodney moaned and panted and gasped, egging John on impatiently. John was really turned-on, but at this point, after the sheer number of orgasms he’d had that day, there wasn’t that desperate edge to it, and he was feeling sort of gentle and mushy and lovey about it all. Oh, he was still going to fuck Rodney’s ability to speak right out of him, but he was going to do it more lovingly and sweetly and slowly this time. 

It was tricky to find an angle that let him cradle Rodney lovingly in his arms and murmur sweet nothings to him and nibble adoringly on his jaw and so on and so forth, while still managing to hit his prostate on pretty much every stroke, but as it happened John was getting pretty good at gay sex so he managed. 

“Oh God, John,” Rodney moaned, “yes— oh—“

“You’re so good,” John told him earnestly, “so beautiful, Rodney—“

“Don’t stop,” Rodney gasped, “oh god, don’t ever stop—“

“I won’t,” John promised, “I won’t stop, I’ll spend forever inside you, inside your beautiful ass—“

“Don’t— ever— stop— fucking— me,” Rodney panted, his whole body taut and quivering, eyes staring blankly past John’s shoulder, and John could feel it, he could feel Rodney’s orgasm building, winding him up, building inexorably. 

“Yeah,” John said, “oh god, you love it, you’re insatiable, you take it so good.”

“John,” Rodney cried, nearly a sob, “oh God, oh, John— oh— oh!” 

“Yes,” John hissed, driving in harder, feeling Rodney start to shake violently. “Rodney! Yes, come for me, come on my cock, oh God, you’re so good—“

Rodney cried out, bucking wildly as he came, his cock trapped between their bodies, nobody’s hands anywhere near it as it bobbed and jerked and spurted. 

“Oh, holy shit,” John said, the white-hot shock of impending climax uncoiling from his gut and down his spine, snapping his hips into a harder rhythm, slamming him into Rodney again, again, again, and John cried out and bit Rodney’s shoulder as he came, shaking almost out of his skin. 

Rodney cried out wordlessly, clutching at John’s hips, thighs clamping down around his waist. John emptied himself into Rodney, the spasms wringing his whole body, curling his toes, clenching his jaw. 

“Rodney,” he gasped, panting, “oh god, Rodney—“ he shuddered hard one last time, nearly spent, hips pinned hard against Rodney, clutching at him and shoved as deep in him as he could go. Finally the last of his breath sighed out of him on a long exhalation and he went limp, resting his forehead against the pillow. 

“Oh my God,” Rodney said finally, thighs trembling around John’s waist. 

“I love you,” John said dopily into his neck, suffused with a deep sense of wellbeing. He knew that wasn’t just the endorphins talking, though. “Rodney, fuck, yes.”

“John,” Rodney said shakily, putting an unsteady hand around the back of John’s neck. He’d been able to untangle himself from that shirt all along, John noticed absently, with a little pang of amusement. 

John gathered what little strength he had and shoved himself up on an elbow so he could pull very, very carefully out of Rodney, who was going to have trouble sitting down tomorrow no matter how much he might have enjoyed that just now. Oh dear. John had just enough coordination to dispose of the condom, and then he came back and wrapped himself around Rodney. He wasn’t worried about the sheets, they’d need washing tomorrow. 

He nuzzled in against Rodney’s neck and settled down to sleep. As he was drifting off, Rodney said, “I love you too, you know.”

“Yeah,” John said, and fell asleep grinning.

 


	20. Family / Planning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three little boys, a slumber party, pizza and pancakes and a blanket fort, literal-minded children, and still time for a little bit of sex: Rodney comes to some realizations about family. 
> 
> A pretty self-indulgent chapter but as I keep hinting, there's some heavy plot coming up and I'm kinda steeling myself.

 

 

 

Chasing a pile of kids around when your ass was so sore you couldn’t really sit wasn’t what Rodney had planned on for his life, but the fact that his ass was sore because of an improbable quantity of the most amazing sex of his life went a long way toward making it totally okay. At some point he retreated up to John’s apartment with Cosmo to get some peace and save the poor cat from the curiosity of exuberant small boys (Thomas knew better and was used to cats, and Joey was trying to “be sweet” and not scareher, but PJ was a total hellion, and they’d already found most of her hiding places by dint of being small enough to crawl right after her under the bed).So far nobody had gotten badly clawed, but that was only because Cosmo’s claws were trimmed (Rodney’d trained her from kittenhood to let him do it, and she was such a weirdo she usually would just lie paws-up in his lap and purr while he used human nail trimmers on her. He’d done it that morning while John was away collecting children). 

He wrote up his report on the bits of tech he’d gotten John to touch, lying on his belly in bed so as not to have to deal with trying to find a comfortable position to sit in. His ass didn’t hurt in a bad way, per se, but he could definitely feel that something big had been in it, and it burned a little right at the opening, and ached more deeply between his pelvic bones. 

The unfortunate side effect was that he kept getting turned on because he kept thinking about it, with a constant reminder like that— thinking about John’s body, thinking of the way pleasure blossomed behind his eyelids with every stroke of John’s thick hard cock into his body, thinking about the way his body had opened up for John, even just daydreaming about the hot, sweet slide of John’s mouth on his. 

He kept having to readjust position because he kept getting hard, and it took a lot of force of will not to just rub himself off. But it would probably be a bad idea to try to get work done while masturbating. He’d done it, in the past, on more than one occasion, because he was pretty much always working and the concept of leisure time normally escaped him, but it usually wasn’t his most efficient work.

The apartment door opened and closed, and Cosmo _mrr_ ’d excitedly from her post at the foot of the bed, jumping down and running out of the room. Rodney finished typing his sentence and turned awkwardly to look at the door. John was leaning in the bedroom doorway. He looked so good, so good— lean jeans-clad thighs, long lithe torso in soft old t-shirt, Cosmo purring in the crook of one arm, standing up to mush her face against his cheek. 

“Hey,” Rodney said, “they didn’t eat you yet.”

“Does your ass hurt?” John asked, mouth twisting a little ruefully. 

“It, um, I wouldn’t say _hurt_ ,” Rodney said, “but um, it definitely feels like it, um, well, got fucked a lot.”

“You’re okay though?” John bit his lip, abashed. “I kind of, I got carried away.”

“I’m fine,” Rodney said, “except I keep thinking about it, thinking about how you fucked me, and now I’m horny as hell.” He rolled onto his back so that his erection was obvious. 

“Oh,” John said, eyebrows going up. 

“Because it’s really hot,” Rodney clarified. “Thinking about why my ass feels the way it was. Because it was really hot at the time, having your cock in me, and in case you didn’t notice, I got off like crazy from it.”

“Yeah,” John said, and swallowed with some difficulty. “Uh. I um. I don’t really um. Have time to do anything about that.” He shifted a little, and it was crystal clear by the manner of his motion that it was because his dick was perking up too. “I just came to, um, to see if you wanted anything in particular on your pizza.” He jerked the thumb of the hand not holding Cosmo over his shoulder. She, oblivious to the conversation, was still rubbing her face ecstatically across his face, and Rodney thought that looked like a really good idea.

“Oh,” Rodney said. He slid off the edge of the bed and came over to the door. “Well. I’m a fan of mushrooms. But failing that, the good old classic pepperoni never goes amiss.”

John was staring at his mouth. “Uh,” he said. “Oh-okay. I’ll, um. I was gonna call that in, in a minute. Uh.”

Nobody had ever, ever looked at Rodney like that before. Acquisitive, yes, predatory yes, hungry yes, but never with that sort of dumbfounded, distracted, yearning awe. Rodney closed the last few inches’ distance, slid a hand around the back of John’s neck, and pulled him down to kiss him thoroughly. 

“Nngh,” John said into his mouth, twitching as Rodney rubbed himself up against his leg, sliding a hand down to his ass. Cosmo thought their proximity was for her benefit, and turned to rub her face against Rodney’s now, purring louder. “I can’t,” John said, breathless, “I just— I left three six-year-old boys alone downstairs playing that racecar game, they’ll have killed one another if I don’t get back down there.”

“Well you can’t take _this_ back down there,” Rodney said, and grabbed John’s now-fairly-visible erection through his pants. 

John swore and grabbed Rodney’s wrist, laughing as he peeled his hand away and pinned him against the doorframe. “You’re going to kill me,” John said, “and then Nancy will raise me from the dead and kill me again for child neglect.”

Cosmo climbed back onto John and curled up against his shoulder, truly convinced that all of their tussling was in service of petting her more. She pressed her whole body sideways against his jaw and kneaded at his shoulder with her claws. “It’ll take you longer to fend me off than it would to just let me blow you,” Rodney said. 

“Jesus,” John said faintly. He still had enough self-possession to rub his cheek against Cosmo. “Your cat’s a whore.”

“I know,” Rodney said cheerfully. “I’m kind of a slut too.” John twitched at that, pressing himself up against Rodney a little bit. It was gratifyingly hot. 

“She’s almost as pushy as you are,” John went on, and now he was doing a little more than pressing, he was kind of rubbing. Rodney moaned a little. The long, lean weight of John was holding him firmly in place and he couldn’t easily get free, and there was definitely something about that that he really, really, really enjoyed. When they were standing up like this John’s greater height came into play, making Rodney feel small; John was strong and dangerous and along with how masculine he was, Rodney sort of hadn’t expected to find that hot. He’d had girlfriends who could beat him up, yeah, but that wasn’t the same, and occasionally getting handcuffed to a bedpost wasn’t nearly as hot as having John manhandle him and hold him down and take him at his pleasure. 

Ok Rodney was really, desperately turned-on now. He wriggled up against John’s thigh, panting a little. 

“Patience,” John murmured, kissing him. “Patience. Once we get the kids fed, it’s only a couple hours until bed, and locking the bedroom door totally doesn’t count as child neglect.” And, incredibly, John pulled away, and poured Cosmo into Rodney’s arms. 

Rodney stared at him, dumbfounded. “Are you serious?” he demanded. Cosmo clawed at his shoulder a little as she regained her balance and dignity, then rubbed herself happily along his cheek, shedding hair into his mouth.

John smirked. “I’m serious,” he said. “Don’t you dare take care of that on your own. Save it for me and I promise, I _promise_ I’ll make it worth your while.”

Rodney sputtered, and John turned and walked toward the apartment door, adjusting himself in his jeans with a casual sort of nonchalance so his state was much less obvious. He turned back as he reached the kitchen. “Pepperoni’s okay, then?”

Rodney was still too busy sputtering to answer. 

 

 

He had largely gotten over it, and had successfully resisted the near-overwhelming urge to masturbate, when he came down the stairs in response to the doorbell that could only be the pizza delivery guy. 

“Hey,” John yelled from the doorway, hearing him, “grab me a beer on the way down!”

“Okay,” Rodney sighed, put-upon, and went back up to grab himself one too. 

“Why did you give him more money than he said?” PJ was asking, having tagged along to the door to carry pizza boxes. John slipped his wallet into his back pocket and looked down at the boy. 

“It’s called a tip,” he said. “You give the driver a little somethin’ to thank him for driving all the way out here.”

“But it’s his job to do that,” PJ said, perplexed.

“Yes but his job doesn’t pay very well,” John said. “And he could do it poorly. So you tip him to thank him for doing it well.”

“I don’t understand,” PJ said. 

“You tip waiters at restaurants too,” John said. Rodney had no idea if PJ was old enough to know better about this or what, but until that moment he hadn’t thought about how goddamn rich that kid was. And John had grown up like that too. Did it distort your understanding of the value of money? It _had_ to. “Because their job is really hard, and them doing it well really makes your meal much better. So you reward them for it by giving them a little extra for your meal, as a thanks for their service.”

“I’ve never seen my dad do that before,” PJ said, sounding almost worried. 

“Oh,” John said, “you don’t see it, really. It’s when he pays the bill, he just leaves extra and doesn’t ask for change.” 

“Oh,” PJ said.

“Taxi drivers too,” John said, “but not car services. Hotel maids, bellhops, the guys at airports who carry your bags for you. All of those people get tips.”

“Why don’t their jobs just pay them better, though?” PJ asked. 

Rodney opened the apartment door for them, glad he hadn’t opened the beers yet so he could hold one in the crook of his arm and have a hand free. “Don’t make your nephew a Communist,” Rodney said. “His dad won’t thank you.”

“Aren’t you one, though?” John asked, playfully faux-confused. 

“I don’t get it,” PJ said, trailing John into the kitchen.

“Rodney’s Canadian,” John said. “They’re socialists.”

“What’s a socialist?” PJ asked. 

“Ask your dad,” John said, as the other two boys’ enthusiasm over pizza drowned them out.There was a general flurry of plates and napkins and small plastic cups and pizza everywhere, and Rodney managed to snag himself two pieces of pepperoni and retreat to the edge of the kitchen to devour them unmolested. 

John wrangled the children pretty skillfully, like he’d handled this many kids on a regular basis. It took a while before John fetched up next to Rodney with a piece of cheese pizza in one hand, and claimed his unopened beer. “I was wondering if you were gonna eat,” Rodney said. 

“I got decent survival skills,” John said, and took a long pull from the beer. “I usually manage.”

“You don’t look like you eat much,” Rodney said, poking him in the belly. 

“I do fine,” John said, and poked Rodney’s belly in return, which wasn’t as flat or as firm but was just fine thank you. John seemed to notice something in Rodney’s expression, because the poke turned into the flat of his palm running lightly along Rodney’s side in a caress. He gave Rodney an unexpectedly soft smile before he was off again. 

Right, they probably couldn’t make out in front of the kids. Rodney snagged another couple of pieces of pizza as the furor moved itself back to the living room, and trailed after them as John cleaned up messy hands and faces before unleashing them onto the upholstery. 

The night’s agenda was a movie from Rodney’s collection that none of the boys had seen, but Rodney had memorized, so he retrieved his laptop and went back to work. Joey was next to John on the couch, and climbed into his lap to snuggle. The other two boys tumbled on the floor like puppies as they figured out where they wanted to sit, but eventually they settled down. 

Rodney got absorbed in his work, and so he didn’t really notice John settling into position against him. Only when he reached the end of his report and did his habitual save-upload-reset encryption-login again routine did he take a moment to glance up at the screen. The movie was progressing, and he’d seen it often enough not to care. But he glanced over and John was snuggled right up next to him, head resting on his shoulder, and when had that happened?

He craned his neck to see John’s face. John had nodded off and was dozing. And in his arms, Joey was motionless, curled into his chest, but his eyes were open and reflected the moving light of the TV screen. He was totally absorbed, and possibly half-asleep, but he didn’t notice Rodney looking at him at all. 

It struck Rodney very suddenly that this was the kind of thing a family would do, all curl up together on the couch. It certainly wasn’t the sort of thing a grown man would do with just a friend. He hadn’t really considered it in any depth but was this, were they, a family? Did he have any right to think of it like that?

He hadn’t been part of a family in a very, very, very long time, maybe ever, but as he thought about it, he remembered sitting with his sister like this, watching some stupid TV movie about family togetherness and looking at each other in disgust because their family wasn’t like that at all. And she’d said _you’re all I’ve got_ and he’d answered _isn’t that enough?_ And wonder of wonders, instead of sarcasm, she’d replied with _yeah_ , and had snuggled right back in against his shoulder. 

And he hadn’t spoken to her since her wedding. 

He connected his laptop back to the Internet, flying through the various layers of security and encryption he had on his personal network— he’d have to get John’s computer set up for that too, so he could— wait. If John had a computer, he’d never let on. 

It wasn’t possible that a man didn’t have a computer, in this day and age. 

Maybe he’d just left it at work when he was injured.

That had to be it.

Badly rattled, Rodney went back to his search. He couldn’t, for the life of him, remember the name of the idiot guy his stupid sister had married. The first name didn’t really matter, but the last name… It was something unexceptional. Something boring. Just like the guy himself, an unexceptional and boring and kind of effete fellow, dark hair, tall. That was all Rodney could remember. Someone utterly unworthy of her, someone who would only drag her down into mediocrity. 

Someone she’d seen something in. Someone she’d made a family with. 

That thought moved Rodney enough that he had to turn his head and kiss John’s hair. John made a little almost-grunt, but didn’t stir at all. Rodney went back to his search. “McKay” turned up only information about himself and random strangers sharing the surname, even with Jeannie’s first and middle names. Redoing the search to exclude “Rodney” turned up results with “Meredith” instead, which was, yeah great. He closed out and started over, and found some of her undergraduate papers, some information about that. Directory. All he wanted was a directory!

It took him another twenty minutes of combining hunches and wild guesses with intuition and logical surmising, and finally he came up with a potential name. Miller. There was a Jeannie Miller who lived in Vancouver. He tried searching again under that name and got a number of hits, mostly relating to community activism. One had a photo.

Yes. Jeannie. It was her, looking exactly as she always had, blonde and curly and pointy-nosed and beaming, with a little blond child on her hip. It wasn’t a great photo, a little blurry and low-res, but Rodney stared at it as big as it would go anyway, for a long time. Finally he right-clicked and saved it to his hard drive, feeling a little weird and guilty about it. 

She looked good. She looked no older than when he’d last seen her. She looked happy. 

And then— goldmine. There was an email address, on an internal webpage with a directory. Something to do with event coordinators for a community bakesale or something. But there she was, Jeannie Miller, a phone number and an email address. 

He copied the email address and opened his email client, pasted it in the To: line, and then stared at the cursor for a while. 

He tried a variety of subject lines, ranging from _hey_ to _Looking for Jeannie McKay From Fort McMurray_ to _so it’s been a while_ , and finally settled on _I hope I have the right email address_ as being both neutral and plausibly-deniable enough. 

On that note, he realized, he was kind of off the hook at writing anything mushy. He could just drop a quick line ascertaining that she was the right person. Maybe make it sound like he’d been looking a little longer than he actually had. Yeah, that’d work. 

_I hope I have the right email address,_ he wrote in the body, even though it was redundant. 

_I had some trouble finding you. You know how bad I am with names, I couldn’t remember what your new last name would be. And I think it’s barbaric for the woman to take the husband’s name anyway._

_So if you’re_ not _formerly Jeannie McKay, please disregard this message, or maybe write back so I know I’ve got the wrong address. Sorry about that._

_If you_ are _formerly Jeannie McKay, hi. It’s Rodney, in case that wasn’t abundantly clear from the email address._

_I’m back in the US now. I’m still working for classified-redacted etc., but at least I’m not in a locked-down windowless basement in a top-secret facility in an undisclosed foreign nation anymore. I have reasonable confidence that my emails can actually go out into the real world now. And, should you be interested, I have a telephone that is probably not bugged, but even if it is, at least it’s capable of dialing out._

_Anyway. I’m almost sure this is the right address, there was a picture that looked like you._

_You looked happy._

_I hope it’s you, anyway. I don’t know where else to look. I’ve been pretty far off the grid for kind of a while, it’s hard to readjust._

_So write back, if you like?_

_— M. Rodney McKay_

 

He let himself reread it once, but then made himself send it. There was no point having done all that searching and then not doing anything with it. He himself wouldn’t be nearly so easy for her to find. 

The movie was over, but he couldn’t reach the remote. Thomas got up and retrieved it, then brought it back to John. He noticed that John was asleep, and his eyes moved hesitantly back and forth between John and Rodney, taking in their relative positions, taking in the way John was leaned into Rodney. He handed Rodney the remote. 

“Are you Mister John’s boyfriend?” Thomas asked quietly. Rodney took the remote, and Joey sat up to turn and look curiously at him. PJ was behind Thomas, and looked up too. 

“Uh,” Rodney said, taken aback. 

“My mom has a girlfriend,” Thomas said encouragingly. “It’s okay if you are. I was just asking.”

John blinked and sat up away from Rodney a little. “What?” he said fuzzily. “What? I’m awake.”

“Is Mister Rodney your boyfriend?” Thomas asked. 

“Yeah,” John said, just like that. He rubbed his eyes. “Why?”

“I dunno,” Thomas said with a shrug. “I was just wondering.” 

“Nosey,” John said, and poked his nose with a grin. “C’mon, who wants ice cream?”

“Ice cream!” PJ yelled, and ran into the kitchen. Joey sat up and looked over at Rodney as his father got up and walked away. 

“You’re my dad’s boyfriend?” he asked, wrinkling his nose in what Rodney had to admit was an adorable expression of confusion. “What does that mean?”

He really was the youngest of all the children here. PJ was seven, and Thomas was nearly seven, but Joey had only just turned six. And sometimes it showed; he was more easily frightened than the others, less resilient, a little slower on the uptake with new ideas, harder to get to focus. But John hadn’t seemed worried about it, so Rodney wasn’t. At that age, a year was a long time.

“It means,” Rodney said, “um, I don’t know what it means.”

“My mom has a boyfriend,” Joey said. “I don’t like him. I like you, though.”

“Well,” Rodney said, absurdly flattered. 

“You have cool toys,” Joey went on. “And you get Dad beers. He likes that. He’s not so sad.” 

“You think he’s not sad because I get him beers?” Rodney asked. 

Joey laughed at that. “No,” he said, as though that were the silliest thing anyone had ever said. “He was sad a lot before, though. He doesn’t usually have anybody to sleep with.”

“To sleep with,” Rodney echoed, a little shocked.

Joey gestured. “To sleep with,” he said. “That’s what it means, right? When you have a boyfriend. Someone to sleep with.” And he gestured at Rodney’s shoulder. “Usually he only has me, and that’s different. Mom wouldn’t tell me why, it just is.”

“Oh,” Rodney said, suddenly understanding the gesture. “To sleep with. Like just now.” That was adorable. Of course, to a six-year-old, sleeping with someone was literal, and John was quite obviously the sort of person who didn’t tend to nod off leaning on just anybody. He did wonder where he’d heard the expression, though. 

“Yeah,” Joey said, pleased. “Someone asked Mom if she was sleeping with her new boyfriend and she told me it’s a big deal to sleep with somebody.”

Rodney realized that Joey was going to go home and tell his mother that he’d seen his father sleeping with his new boyfriend, and that was probably going to go badly, but he really had no idea what the right thing to say to that was.

“You want ice cream or what?” John asked, poking his head out of the kitchen, and Joey leapt to his feet, face lighting up, and dashed into the kitchen. John patted him on the head as he went by, and said to Rodney, “I was talking to you.”

“Yes,” Rodney said, and shunted his laptop onto the side table, noticing for a moment the novelty of the surface being bare enough to fit a computer without him needing to shove anything aside first. He never kept it so tidy. With John here it kind of looked like a furniture showroom. He went in, and the boys all had quite large bowls of ice cream and were making a mess all over their faces. 

John bumped his shoulder, and made a crazy-eyes expression that might have been expressing either relief or sexual arousal, Rodney wasn’t sure. “You wanna dish your own, or shall I?” he asked, voice sort of aggressively normal. 

“You’re having some, right?” Rodney asked. It struck him to look over at the pizza boxes. “You had more than one piece of pizza, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” John said, “I had a second one. And I’m having half of the rest of this ice cream, so you say when, and I’m just gonna eat the rest from the carton.” He plopped a big scoop into the last bowl.

“More than that,” Rodney said. “Okay. That’s enough.” 

He watched John demolish the rest of the ice cream carton, then wrangle the children through handwashing, then facewashing, then tooth-brushing, into pyjamas, and then with a great deal of ruckus they shoved the furniture in the living room around and made the couch and chair cushions into three little beds, heaped with blankets. John went one further and pushed the chairs around so that he could stretch a blanket across them and make the whole thing into a massive blanket fort. The finishing touch was that he put a small nightlight on the end of an extension cord and wedged it into the doorway. 

He lay for a while with his upper half inside the doorway and everything from his butt downward hanging out, and Rodney could hear that he was telling the boys a story that sounded suspiciously like the plot of a particular Batman episode Rodney remembered watching many, many years ago (oh, now _there_ was a box set he ought to buy). Rodney wandered closer, and bent down to see if he could peer in, but he couldn’t. Which meant nobody could see out. A wicked idea came to him, and he moved stealthily, even closer, and crouched down to whisper a feather-light touch up the back of John’s thigh. John twitched, but his voice didn’t falter, and Rodney moved his hand up farther, stroking John’s asscheek, then giving it a firm squeeze. 

John continued with his story, but if Rodney remembered the episode right, he was nearly done, so Rodney just sat down and left his hand where it was, resting on John’s ass. John wriggled a little, but didn’t interrupt himself. Finally he wound the story down, and gave the boys a little pep talk about falling asleep and being good. He then kissed Joey, and to Rodney’s surprise asked if Thomas wanted a goodnight kiss too. “Yes please,” Thomas said, and John wriggled further into the blanket fort to oblige him. 

“I’ve known Thomas a long time,” John said solemnly. “Since he was very little and couldn’t fall asleep without a kiss. I haven’t known you nearly so long, PJ, and you’re a lot bigger than he was then, but if you want one, you can have one too.”

Rodney couldn’t hear PJ’s answer, but in a moment John moved and there was a quiet smacking noise like someone being kissed on the cheek. “Now go to sleep, boys,” John said, and backed out of the shelter. He turned around as the door blanket fell down, grabbed Rodney, and kissed him on the mouth, quietly but with some force. 

Rodney held on to his biceps so he didn’t fall over, and let his head rock back with it. John released him and climbed to his feet. “Now _you_ ,” he said. 

“Can we make a grown-up blanket fort?” Rodney asked. 

“As you can see,” John said, hauling Rodney to his feet and dragging him to the bedroom, “I have considerable blanket-fort-making skills.” He pushed him into the bedroom and shut the door behind himself. “I once made a blanket fort for Nancy,” he went on, “and we spent most of a weekend in it, and it was one of the times I set a personal sex record, so don’t toy with me about blanket forts.”

“That sounds awesome,” Rodney said. 

John shoved him down onto the bed and straddled his hips. “It was,” he said. “But I’m sort of impatient at the moment and I’d really rather skip the blanket fort and go right for the sex.”

“Okay,” Rodney said. “Remember I’m kind of a slut.”

“It’s one of my many favorite things about you,” John said, and lowered his head to kiss him again. 

“Mmm,” Rodney sighed after a little while. “I’m game and all, but my ass is… well…”

“No,” John said, “I’m not goin’ in there, yesterday was ridiculous.”

“Going in there,” Rodney said, indignant. “You make it sound like cave exploration.”

That reduced John to helpless laughter, and Rodney rolled him down and took shameless advantage, tickling him and stripping his shirt off and sucking little kisses all down his side to his hip, peeling him out of his jeans. John recovered from his laughing fit after a little while and fought back, getting Rodney’s shirt and pants off, then sliding his body up against Rodney’s and kissing him hard and deep. 

“A very small, tight, wet, hot cave,” John said breathlessly, “a cave of wonders, a portal to Heaven,” and Rodney smacked his arm and kissed him harder. 

“Jesus,” Rodney said in a moment, when he could next speak, “you’re not really much of a poet.”

“No,” John admitted, and he eased Rodney’s boxers waistband down and grabbed his dick and started working at it with his hand. Rodney made a muffled noise and shoved his hips up. John ground his erection against Rodney’s hip, rubbing off against him while he jerked Rodney off with one hand. “Shh,” John said, laughing, and Rodney clamped his mouth shut against the moans he wanted to make. 

He couldn’t get his hand down to grab John’s cock, so he grabbed his jaw and kissed him and kissed him as he got closer and closer. “Oh,” he murmured, as quiet as he could manage, “oh my, oh my God,” and John made a truly ridiculously hot little whimpering noise and started to shake, and Rodney had never actually felt so clearly what it felt like when a guy came, the way his cock pulsed and twitched, the throb of muscle spasms. It was— “oh holy shit,” Rodney said, and came all over John’s hand and himself. 

“Yeah,” John whispered, fervent, “yeah, Rodney,” and Rodney shuddered and shook through it, and John was still twitching against him, face pressed up against the side of his neck. 

“Wow,” Rodney said eventually, as John let go of his cock and licked his fingers lazily. 

“I meant to do somethin’ really hot,” John confessed, voice blurry with sleepiness. “Like a blowjob or somethin’. But I kinda. I got impatient.”

“It was worth the wait,” Rodney said, and turned to wrap himself around John and kiss his forehead. John sighed, settling into his arms, but in a moment he pulled away a little, grumbling. 

“I gotta go check on the kids,” he said indistinctly. 

“What, now?” Rodney asked. 

“If they’re bein’ bad and keepin’ each other up, yeah,” John said. He rolled onto his back and turned his head to look at the clock. “It’s been like half an hour, forty-five minutes, they really should’ve fallen asleep by now.”

“How do you know how long it takes six-year-olds to fall asleep?” Rodney asked. 

“One of ‘em’s mine,” John said. “I don’t see him as much as I want but I see him enough to know. And I know, he’s the baby out there, if anybody’s bein’ bad, he’s the one that’s gonna get the short end of it. I know exactly what it means to be the youngest, it means you don’t quite know what’s goin’ on and can’t quite keep up but you’re damned if you’re gonna admit it, and it can either be awesome or terrible. And that’s what bein’ a parent is: I’m determined that it’s gonna be awesome for him.” 

Rodney sat up as John rolled himself out of the bed, visibly logy, and stepped into a pair of pyjama pants that he must have brought down at some point. Well, a lot of John’s clothes were here, still in laundry baskets. Maybe Rodney really should just ask him to move in. He could put his own office upstairs, that would be okay. 

Eh, it sort of didn’t matter; John had already moved in, in effect, and that was totally fine. Rodney found a pair of clean underwear and pulled it on. John sort of staggered out of the room— his brain chemistry was such, Rodney reflected, that he really was pretty much primed to pass out after orgasm, and expecting anything at all out of him at a time like this was kind of unreasonable, but there he was, dutifully checking on the kids to make sure his baby wasn’t getting henpecked. 

John came back in a moment, during which time Rodney had cleaned himself up and made the bed marginally presentable. John left the door open a crack, smiling. “Out cold,” he said quietly. “All of ‘em. Good boys.” 

“They’re old enough that they sleep through the night, right?” Rodney asked. “That’s, like, a baby thing, that they don’t sleep all at a stretch, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” John said, “but sometimes if they’re in an unfamiliar place they wake up and don’t know what to do, so I figure, I better leave the door open and be ready to go check on them again.” 

“I guess,” Rodney said. “Will it be weird if they see us in bed together.”

John shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, I just came out to my kid, that’s super weird. But I figure, if he’s got any questions about it, he’ll ask his mom and it’ll be super awkward for her.”

“You seemed so nonchalant about it,” Rodney said, admiring the smooth line of John’s torso as he climbed back into bed and shut the bedside lamp off. 

“I was _flipping my shit_ ,” John said, settling into the bed and pulling up the covers. “But a skill I learned in Officer Training that has stood me in really good stead for parenting is the whole not letting on thing. If you don’t want them to freak out, you just pretend it’s no big deal, whatever it is. I’ve done that successfully with a bullet wound, you know? It’s just a blank smile and a nonchalant eyebrow and a _yeah sure_ , and if you’re not worried they’re not worried and they’ll just keep on as they are. You’d be amazed what you can get through like that.”

“Really,” Rodney said. 

“Really,” John said. “It’s freaky as hell. But, you know, odds are I’ll be gay with you for a good long while, so it’s just as well he gets used to it now. I’m just worried if PJ repeats it to Patrick and Patrick says something fucking stupid and PJ repeats it to Joey. I don’t need that, I don’t know what I’d do then.”

“He won’t,” Rodney said, and kissed John. 

“I hope not,” John said, snuggling close against Rodney. 

 

 

 

Rodney woke rather confused in the dark as a small voice made distressed noises and John got out of the bed. 

“It’s okay, buddy,” John murmured comfortingly, and Rodney was starting to slide back off to sleep, reassured, when he realized John wasn’t talking to him, he was talking to a very small person who was now in the bed and curled against John, whimpering indistinct words in incomplete sentences. 

“Hm?” Rodney blinked. 

“Don’t worry,” John said, and kissed the small person’s head, murmuring softly to him. Joey, it was definitely Joey, his skin was too pale in the light from the nightlight (there were suddenly nightlights all over Rodney’s apartment, John must have put them there) to be either of the other two boys. PJ was quite light-skinned, lighter than Thomas, but Joey was really bright-white by comparison. 

Made sense; Joey was the baby, and most likely to wake up scared. And most likely to crawl in bed with John; Rodney remembered now that John had said Joey usually slept in his bed on visits. 

Was it weird for two gay guys to be in bed with a little kid? Rodney considered it for like half a second before he remembered that this was John he was talking about, and John would cheerfully die rather than endanger his kid in any serious fashion. So it probably wasn’t weird. Rodney rolled over and went to sleep.

 

 

When Rodney woke up it was from a dream that his lab in Siberia had somehow been invaded by large hamsters, who were moving around and squeaking and shredding things. He realized eventually that it must be Cosmo moving around, and he put up a hand to both pet her and fend her off, and encountered something small and fuzzy, but it was not his cat. He opened his eyes and Thomas was sitting on the bed, looking down at him; Rodney’s flailing hand had settled in his close-cropped curly hair.

“Gah,” Rodney said, starting fully awake. Thomas laughed. “I thought you were the cat,” Rodney went on, retrieving his hand and shoving himself up on his elbows. John’s hair was visible under the covers, and from the way he was moving, shaking with laughter Rodney realized, he was obviously not sleeping. PJ was at the foot of the bed, as bright-eyed as if he’d been awake for hours. 

“Meow!” Thomas said. “Meow! I’m a kitty!” He butted, cat-like, at Rodney’s hand, and made strange sort of spit-laden noises that Rodney realized were supposed to be purring. 

“Where is the cat?” PJ asked. 

“She is hiding upstairs in the other apartment,” Rodney said, “because you were too mean to her and she got scared.”

“I didn’t mean it,” PJ said, slightly abashed for about an instant and a half before he suddenly launched himself at Thomas. “I’ll play with this kitty instead!” 

Thomas shrieked with laughter and rolled over the lump that was John, and Rodney sat up and rubbed at his face. “Christ,” he said, “what time is it?”

“Six-two-one,” PJ said, sing-song, as he broke off his wrestling match with Thomas and somersaulted backwards across the bed. Of course, there was a digital clock over on the other bedside table. Rodney hadn’t rearranged in here to reflect that he wasn’t sleeping alone anymore. And the thought of that warmed him enough that he didn’t quite feel so icky about being awake at this hour.

John’s face emerged from under the blankets. “Did you guys sleep okay?” 

“Where is Joey?” Thomas asked. 

John grinned, and there was a very small laugh from under the covers, and in a moment Joey crawled out, delighted. “I knew you wouldn’t find me!” he said. Everyone seemed to think that was funny except PJ, who insisted with a great deal of bravado that of course _he_ had known Joey was there.

“Can we have pancakes?” Thomas asked, losing interest in the previous conversation. 

“Pancakes!” Joey said excitedly, and grabbed John by the hair. “Pancakes!”

“I don’t know,” John said, then grabbed Joey by the ribs, making him shriek and flail. “I don’t know!” he said again, and Joey writhed, screaming. It was a truly ear-splitting noise, and Rodney covered his ears as the other two boys dove in. He had no idea who was tickling who but everyone was making a lot of noise. Thank God Cosmo was still upstairs, she’d’ve lost her mind in all this. 

Rodney escaped from the bed and put his bathrobe on. He went out into the kitchen and had finished putting a pot of coffee on by the time John came out with Joey on his hip and the other two boys orbiting him like little satellites. John had managed to get a shirt on— it was orange and said “Stuff is Awesome!”— and came up behind Rodney, depositing Joey’s butt on the counter top so he could pull Rodney backward by the belt and kiss his cheekbone. “Are you ready for pancakes?” he asked. 

“I am never not ready for pancakes,” Rodney answered. 

“Then go turn on the cartoons,” John said, “and leave the cooking to me and Joey.”

“Cartoons!” Thomas said, excited, and they ran out of the room. Rodney went and turned the television on. He hadn’t really explored the local network TV very much, but it only took him a moment to find a channel broadcasting some kind of incredibly garish and noisy cartoon. He settled down on the couch with Thomas, but noticed that PJ only stood looking for a moment, before going back to the kitchen doorway. 

“How do you make pancakes?” PJ asked, sort of quietly. 

“Come on in and I’ll show you,” John said. “Up you go. Next to Joey. You can have a job too. His job is to stir. I bet you can help me measure. Are you good at measuring things?” 

“I wanna stir,” PJ whined.

“But Joey’s too little to measure yet,” John said. “If you take away stirring, there’s no job he can do. Only _you_ can help me measure.”

“Oh,” PJ said. “Okay.”

Rodney heard the coffeemaker gurgle, and went into the kitchen to get himself a cup of coffee. PJ and Joey were sat next to each other on the counter, PJ getting flour everywhere as he dumped it into the bowl, and Joey stirring inexpertly but enthusiastically with a rubber spatula. “Are you making those from scratch?” Rodney asked in astonishment, when he failed to notice the familiar box of the mix he used on the rare occasions he bothered. 

John shot him a look. He had flour across his chest, somehow. “The mix is basically just flour and baking powder,” he said. “It’s not hard to just add your own.”

“Yes, but,” Rodney said, but he didn’t have words yet, pre-coffee and post-rude awakening by committee, so he gave up. He filled and doctored a cup for John once he’d done his own and taken a healthy swig. He set the cup on the counter next to John that did _not_ contain close to a hundred pounds of wriggling small boy, and made his escape. 

In a little while, despite the chaos, once everyone was fed and washed and shooed back to the television, John sat down next to Rodney with his second cup of coffee. Rodney looked over at him. John looked so happy it twisted something in Rodney’s chest. “This is the life,” John said, with no apparent irony. 

“Yeah,” Rodney said. It really wasn’t what Rodney had planned on, but it seemed to be working out okay anyway. 

 

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